Wednesday, November 08, 2006  Improper Characterizations  Fred
Barnes, in the Weekly Standard, characterizes the GOP loses
yesterday as a shellacking. However, the turnover in the House
and probably the Senate are really no worse than any other loses
in the third election cycle of a presidential terms.
Historically, the President's party will lost 25-30 seats in teh
house and 3-5 seats in the Senate. So lets take a look, House
Democrats will have a net gain between 25 and 29 seats and did
slightly better than historic averages in the Senate. Hardly a
shellacking.  What Barnes does point out and appropriately so,
is the developing split of the country along North/South lines.
The battleground for control of Congress and national policy is
shifting to the west. This is troublesome in some respects, but
less so in others.  Barnes writes: What should worry Republicans
most, however, is erosion of its strength in the West and in two
states in particular: Colorado and Arizona. Fours years ago,
Colorado was solidly