Election aftermath

Well, the election is over and my guy lost, big-time. He got walloped, while I did nothing over here. I could give a litany of reasons for bloggin so little, such as grad school, family, church, student-teaching, etc... but in the end, it was apathy, lethargy and a disappointment in what was happening and self-denial in watching the polls not move.

I blamed my guy, but now that everything election-wise is done, I see that it was GOP incompetence and probably I'm part of that. My guy's errors will be dealt with in another post. As for me, a conservative who refuses to blog is not the reason why anybody lost, especially because 1/2 of the people who visited my website (see the counter at the bottom) are spammers, the remaining 1/4 are visits from myself and the others are repeat visitors, so not many people are impacted or effected (affected?) by my opinions. Count me as one more anecdote demonstrating why the GOP lost support amongst its base and the independents. Drudge ran a story in the first week after the election that showed that the (R) party received around 27 million votes for Senate. Compare that to the nearly 65 million who voted for Bush. The reason nearly 40 million less voted was corruption, overspending and Iraq.

That being said, herewith follows some more anecdotes about problems I experienced in trying to help the GOP in the recent election. The GOP transmission contained more sand in the gears than fluid.

I tried to sign up for the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance (SOB) blogroll, got one e-mail that asked if I was from out of state, to which I said yes, and then nada. Either I'm a worse blogger than I want to admit or they didn't care. Another prominent Ohio Blogger demanded that any blogger on his blogroll be from Ohio. It was as if I saw the sign that said, "beware of dog, owner has a gun and no solicitations" and left. Certainly, I should be blogging more, as that is the nature of blogging, but when an in-state candidate needs funds and support, the last thing any political party should be doing is turning volunteers and opinion shapers away.

Here is another thing: One week before voting day (Oct 31) I signed up online with Michigan's Kent County GOP webpage to volunteer for everything in any way. I gave them my name, phone #, e-mail address, snail-mail address and clicked on every possible option, even the "mug those voting for your opponent" option. Disclosure: I did not volunteer to be an intern. KCGOP response: nada in the form of phone calls, phone messages, e-mail messages or snail mail.

I did get GOTV slips from the GOP in my postal mailbox, phone-calls and phone-messages from the MI GOP candidates, but nobody wanted my help. I also volunteered to be a precint delagate, but apparently I'm supposed to fill out some .pdf form. However, I never received any e-mail, automated or otherwise, telling me I had screwed up and needed to follow directis when I fill out forms. So I printed off a sample ballot for my wife and we voted to shoot doves in MI, but discovered that we would have to keep our recipe for shish-ka-dove on hold. We were anticipating using our really swell Ranch marinade and garlic baste in order to denderize the dove meat. Maybe next year.

To top it off, I e-mailed both Michigan Senators, Stabenow and Levin, about whether they were the person who put the porkbuster bill on hold, and Senator Levin respsonded saying no and then blah, blah, blah for a long paragraph. Senator Levin is not even up for reelection this year. No wonder the Democrats won.

In Ohio I signed-up to be on an e-mail list during the primaries for Blackwell, Petro & Strickland. I got on Strickland's e-mails right away and received 2-4 messages per day from him, but nothing from Petro and Blackwell. I tried again with both (R) men and this time got some info from Petro, but nothing from Petro. Finally Blackwell won so I resigned up with both he and Strickland, as I hadn't checked my e-mail for 30 days, so the computer mainframe stopped sending me stuff. Strickland is still sending press-releases, and I do not remember exactly, but it does seem to have taken awhile for Blackwell to send me an e-mail. Attention to detail is important, especially in a political transmission.

Again, the candidates lost on the issues, not my minor problems. However, the problems at the top seem to have trickled-down to all levels.

Well, that's enough about my problems, but, positively, I will make some formatting changes here in order to deal with various content that appeals to me, rather than strictly Ohio politics. I will be fortunate to make 3 posts a day, let alone 1 on some days, but we shall see.