A quick quote from my good friend
Bill Whittle
(well, he's my friend, but he doesn't know me from a stump /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif )
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I just heard on the radio from a Democratic state senator who said that "the people were unable to figure out who they were really angry at," – that this was really a vote against George W Bush, only the people weren't smart enough to figure out how to go about it and blamed it on poor old Gray Davis. Yes, in their righteous fury and anger at the Republican President, the People of California elected… a Republican governor! That'll show him!
...
The day will come when we will lose a big election. On that day, we should say that we lost because we failed – we failed to articulate our message, we failed because we ran corrupt and uninspiring candidates, we failed because we didn't listen to the wisdom of the electorate – we failed because we thought four or five political hacks in a campaign room somewhere knew what was better for the nation or the state than the millions and millions of people who actually live and work in it. And on that day, we should pledge to do better, to try harder to get the message across, and most importantly, to listen to what the people are saying. And we should accept that loss, congratulate the winners, accept defeat with grace and dignity – like adults -- and then look under the hood with a very cold and unemotional eye, fix the mistakes, and get a better product out there. This would mean giving up the infantile pleasures of moaning and crying about the Lost Cause. But that is what you have to do in order to win. And with stakes this high, winning matters. It matters.
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