so too will the Republican majority collapse.

If not by the midterms, then by 2008.

It just seems that everything that can possibly go wrong, has gone wrong and will continue to go wrong for the Republican party. Living in New York, I'm bearing witness to the utter collapse of the party. Major Republican candidates like Jeanine Pirro, K.T. McFarland, John Spencer, and John Faso have turned into laughing-stocks who have been, or are going to be, destroyed in their elections. And there is serious talk that the Republican State Senate majority is going to dwindle or outright disappear. That would be a dream for Spitzer, who will then enjoy a democratic-controlled state government. Hopefully he'll be friendly to business, because if he dares to hike up taxes any further then all he will witness during his term is the collapse of the New York economy (I hear that economic collapse doesn't help incumbents win elections). BTW, I'm not insinuating that a Republican majority will do any better with taxes: Pataki and Bruno have done jack to cut government spending, and they've been in power together for over 12 years.

Then yesterday we find out that our Republican congress may have been harboring a gay pedophile for over a year. Fantastic, not that the Abramoff scandal, rampant government spending, and President Bush hasn't done enough to tarnish the Republican image already. The party has been strolling into a disaster and have done little to protect themselves in this election, and it looks like the Democrats are going to shave a few more seats off of the Republican majority. Can the Republicans reach back to their roots and champion our traditional ideals? I originally joined the party because I wanted to vote for someone who was going to scale back the federal government and leave most domestic governent issues in the hands of the state. I wanted to elect officials who would deregulate businesses, end protectionism, and lower the income tax. Instead I get more taxes, a weaker economy, and more regulations. I've begun to embrace the Libertarian party because the need for a third-party is being felt more now than ever before. If the parties were to fracture, then issues would no longer be "politicized", instead candidates would rise up on platforms that are meaningful and, once elected, would actually act on those platforms because they would want to be re-elected. In our two-party, one member district system this is almost impossible. Both these parties have strayed so far from their mission and platforms that they need to be abdicated, otherwise these shenanigans will only continue. To think, that for over a year the party KNEW that Mark Foley was a pedophile, and did absolutely nothing! We all know that if the Republican party had found out that a Democrat was a pedophile and was being protected by his party, they would have blown the cover off of that story and buried them with it. Now if the Democrats bury the Republicans, no one will ever have to wonder why. Dum Spiro, Spero.