OK...the biggest GLARING thing that I am noticing is that there seems to be ZERO message coordination since the polls started closing last night...
In the days leading up to the election - the buzz word about endangered republicans is that they were a "Committed Conservative."
Go back and read their bios on their campaign pages.
Google "Commited Conservative"
....almost like a solid stand that we aren't lily-livered scaredy cats. We're bold, we stand our ground and stay the course...committed to our causes.
Fast Foward to election night 2006. What struck me last night was how tame JC Watts was on CNN, nothign underhanded to say. Bill Bennet was bitter angry white man, but what do you expect? Fox News coverage was positively serene. Dick Army - crying a river about all the poor "good and decent people" loosing their jobs (oh, waa!).
So even while they licked their wounds, there was NOT a SINGLE vicious soundbyte repeated ad nauseum throught as usual. Nothing cleaver and mean to project their shortcomings back onto the democrats. Nothing but stoicism.
If nothing else, the Bush R's have ALWAYS had a soundbyte. It seems the only thing they have rolled out is "San Fransisco Values" and "Conservative Democrats" which are hardly the underhanded/backstabbing zingers that we've been used to.
Are they really wanting to get cast as "conciliatory" and regain some positives for being classy losers? Things are too quiet and that is what is scary. We've come to automatically expect the worse, so either they are totally scrambling for a message and REALLY didn't have a plan in place to roll out if they lost...OR they're ramping up some late surprise....