SHIFT_gridlock

It's hard to overstate how historic this Election Day was for Republicans. Although Democrats kept control of the U.S. Senate, not since 1948 have this many House seats changed parties.

Also, as I write this the GOP has picked up 11 governorships. (A few races haven't yet been called.) Ohio is among those states, sad to say, with John Kasich wresting the office from one-term Democrat Ted Strickland.

It's quite a feat for a party that appeared to have sentenced itself to the margins two years ago. How'd they do it?

First, let's recognize the standard-bearers of the Republicans' march back toward relevance: Pres. Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The Democratic Party, holding control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, had a rare opportunity to press its advantage -- and instead proceeded to screw the pooch in breathtaking fashion.

Once in power, the Dems splintered into familiar factions. They didn't accomplish much, and what they did accomplish they couldn't sell (or flat ran away from). Predictably adept at ineptitude, Democrats handed their fortunes to the GOP on a silver platter.

Second, after the presidential election Republicans found themselves ass-deep in lemons. True to the aphorism, they made lemonade -- instead of fleeing the fringe, they embraced it.

The GOP saw that the Tea Party, straying from its libertarian roots, responded reliably to stock-in-trade Republican tactics -- fear and loathing, that is -- and quickly absorbed the once-promising movement. That bought enough votes to swing dozens of races.

Third, Republican candidates did a masterful job of tapping into voters' upset that happy days aren't yet here again, playing the "Obama's failed policies" card at every turn. Such frustration is at once understandable and delusional, and appealing to it worked -- just ask Ted Strickland, whose election-day fate was all but sealed by 12 (count 'em) campaign visits by Pres. Obama.

Two years, especially two years of being sabotaged by one's own party, isn't nearly enough time to resurrect the worst economy in our nation's history -- hell, it's not even long enough to make real progress. The People demand instant solutions, however, and unreasonable impatience helped pave the way for a GOP landslide.

How about those shadowy "outside groups"? Didn't they play a big role?

Sort of. They sure didn't deliver for Democrats, and one has to wonder how influential the well-funded groups' messages would've been if the Dems hadn't convened their circular firing squad.

So there's just cause for Republicans to celebrate this morning but no good reason to flatter themselves. And yes, tea-baggers should be dancing -- carefully, though, lest they trip over something. Between dishonest campaigning and walking through doors unlocked by the opposition, there's isn't much for either to be proud of.

We, the People, got what we asked for -- we threw a lot of bums out. We got our fresh faces. And we got something else: gridlock.

We didn't alter the status quo -- we perpetuated it.

Think about it. The 2010 elections were carried not by skilled and committed public servants but by noisy ideologues. Voters sided with the most strident rhetoric, the most emotional (and least thoughtful) messages, half-truths rather than complete facts.

It disturbs me, for example, that we Buckeyes threw out Attorney General Richard Cordray, a Democrat, in favor of Republican challenger Mike DeWine. Enough conservative voters overlooked Cordray's steadfast defense of the Ohio and U.S. constitutions to elect DeWine -- a reckless enemy of liberty who won simply because he was a non-incumbent Republican.

DeWine, in reality, is politically indistinguishable from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. For freedom-loving Ohioans, his victory comes as a belated Halloween fright.

We can all be glad that at least two "fresh faces" won't be packing for the U.S. Senate. The accidental Alvin Greene was trounced by Jim DeMint in South Carolina, and in Delaware the constitutionally ignorant Christine O'Donnell lost by 20 points to Chris Coons.

Neither of the winners is a prize, particularly -- DeMint is a right-wing nutjob and Coons is preferable only when standing next to O'Donnell. The scarier epilogue to the two races is that comic-book superhero Greene pulled 28% of the vote and I'm-not-a-witch O'Donnell a whopping 40%. It just amazes me (then again, maybe not) that fully two-fifths of Delawareans are either that desperate or that stupid.

(Two fifths -- that's about what I'd have to consume to cast a vote for either of those pretenders.)

Government by the People -- even hoped-for "small government" -- requires actual governing, and yet we keep falling for politicking. How in the hell are we going to get small government from big politics?

Excusing gridlock as some sort of defense against the dreaded "Obama agenda" -- which wasn't going anywhere anyway, really -- is politics, not patriotism.

It cripples our government, insults the People and postpones The Revolution. Until we figure that out, it threatens to be the downfall of our nation.