Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Post-Election Thoughts

Well, the mid-term national elections were yesterday, and it looks like change was in the air...the Democrats took control of the House, and depending on how a couple of close races shake out, they might end up with the Senate too. Closer to home, Republican businessman Pete Ricketts spent about $12 million of his own money, only to garner about 35% of the vote to incumbent Democrat Ben Nelson's 65% in what had been a very nasty race for the Senate. In such an incredibly conservative, Republican state as Nebraska, one might have expected at least a little bit closer of a race...but Nebraskans are not only conservative, they're also independent. Ben was smart in the last couple of weeks by focusing his ads on how he's not a party-line guy, but instead he's a Nebraska-first guy. Whichever party has the right answers for what's best for the state, even if it's not his own party. Whether that's entirely true about him can be debated...and I'm not gonna. Bottom line though is that it's a message that resonates with this state's voters.

Nebraska also voted down a proposal that would have legalized video keno (a.k.a. video crack in smoky small town bars). I was overjoyed when we voted down proposals (can't remember if it was last year or 2 years ago...my how time flies!) to legalize casinos, but I was afraid people might see this as not that big of a deal, figure "what the heck?" and vote it through.

If only we could repeal the lottery...never gonna happen, but a guy can dream, can't he?

The last item of interest was a constitutional amendment that would have created a formula for a state spending lid. While the sentiment was a good one (controlling government spending), I'm incredibly wary of constitutionalizing formulas, because as soon as you do, some weird situation is going to come up that you never dreamed of, and you're gonna want some way to make an exception...and you won't have the freedom because of the damn formula.

Yes Virginia, sometimes it's possible to restrict government TOO much.

Well, that's about all the political talk you'll hear out of me. We now continue with your regularly scheduled blog.

T.A.(P)D.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, my election did not go as many hoped. I tend to be on the losing side when it comes to election time. Of course, some find it most difficult to be a conservative democrat...hahaha