3 days ago was the US midterm elections. In short, The republicans won very big, in fact by almost historic proportions. This thread is all about the elections. Starting topic: what do you think the message was from America to Obama?

I paid attention to the elections and it was a historic win for the Republicans. 2 years ago it looked like the republican party was falling apart. And then they come back 2 years later with a win that hasn't been seen for 40+ years.

I think there are 2 major things that are being said by these results.

1. America doesn't agree with the direction that the democratic regime was taking the country. Insane spending and the Health Care changes. The spending/bailouts haven't worked and Obamacare is only going to make things worse.

2. The republicans have a mandate to do what they said they would. Most of them ran on small government and they better deliver. Even if they don't succeed they need to at least put on a good show of trying to reduce spending. I realize that with a democratic held Senate and a democratic president that it will be tough to get that done.

I doubt this will change much. The democrats can still filibuster or veto anything the republicans would try to do (I seriously doubt their sincerity anyways), and there are not enough votes to repeal anything that has already been put into place. Plus, they have already proven they will just use power through other backroom deals where congress has no power anyways.

I have far more faith in Republicans than democrats, Republicans have been corrupt to, but not as bad as democrats.

well.... I think they're both pretty corrupt...

the reason why I have any semblance of hope this time is that there are some new faces showing up that can hopefully step up to the plate early on and try to get things done.

I agree with lagslayer that a lot is going to get slowed down or veto'd but regardless of what the dems try to do it will only look like a flip flop of what happened over the last 2 years. The Dems will become the party of no instead of the republicans.

That's true, if there were more new faces on the democrats they probably would have won more than they did, although probably wouldn't of kept the majority, I noticed lots of incumbents were voted out.

yeah.... but there are still enough of the old faces at the top that I don't see a whole lot of real change happening. They will try, but the system is too corrupt for any real positive change to happen.

I think both parties have their flaws (to put it lightly) and I personally don't care who is running against Obama, I'm voting against him. And before someone tries to tell me I'm being raccist I'm not. I just don't agree with anything he's done so far. He preached and preached about this medical system and then didn't so anything to change it. I know all presidents do that, but he did nothing but preach about it the whole time he was running for president and then he did nothing. Not to mention the whole time he's been in office what has he really done? Nothing that's what.
I'm not gonna say anything more because I don't wanna be the start of a fight so I'll just leave it at that.

I am not that into politics but from what i hear, the republicans have a foothold.

I don't get how most republicans ran on the "smaller government" idea. In all of the history of America I don't think our government has ever gotten smaller(someone please enlighten me).

tonetone714 : I doubt it ever has.... but it also has never been as big as it is now. There is a fairly big anti-big government movement.... apparently people are tired of the government interfering in their lives...

geeogree : Yea that's true.

I'm for having a smaller/ less controlling government, I just don't see it ever happening. It kind of reminds me of obama's "change/hope" campaign, sounded good but nothing happened.

I agree too.... I see the US government becoming so bloated that it can't hold itself up. What happens after that is up in the air.... but I can't see things going on the way they are much longer....

I wouldn't give up hope completely, before reagan we didn't have a guy quite like reagan who cut everything. Before him it was like roosevelt who was very big government.

Hoochman : It's ironic you would bring up Reagan, because Reagan increased government spending massively. The most fiscally efficient president in modern times I can think of is probably Clinton.

Traduweise : The biggest things that Reagan did to drive up debt was increasing defense spending by 35%. And every other defense initiative he came up with. Clinton's economy was more sound, it didn't really come up or down.

Hoochman : Reagan drastically increased government spending. Bringing him up as a guy who "cut everything" rings somewhat hollow.

yay for off-topic!

Anyway, the fact that we haven't really had an administration in over 50 years (or more to be honest I don't really know) that has cut government spending overall is troubling to me. The government can't grow forever. Eventually it will grow to be too big and it will stifle the economy completely.... which it's already starting to do now. I think unless spending is under control the US government will fail.

Traduweise : Yeah, raised defense spending drastically, but cut everything else, a very good example he is for republicans.

An increase in government spending is an increase in government spending. I almost feel sorry for Obama; the thing about the bailouts is that we will never know just how effective they were, because we will never know what would have happened without them. And with the Republicans controlling the house and Democrats controlling the senate, almost nothing is going to get done for the next two years. Unless the economy is going to pick up on its own, he will probably get blamed for a lot of stuff that was out of his control.