Thanks for your response. Maybe we are close to a boundary of what HN will tolerate. So, I shouldn't try to comment on all you mentioned.

In effect, commenting on the Republicans, what is crucial is simpler than your list -- they lost!

For a politically neutral response, all I wanted was good gumment. I'm registered as a D but try to vote just for good gumment. I like my Congressman, and he's R.

But as you will see below, I learned a lot from the two links from antoko.

At times I was shaking my head or screaming or both at some of the Rs talking about 'abortion': Why? Because Roe has been the law for 40 years, and no matter what anyone wants about Roe, there's zip, zilch, zero chance Roe will be changed. So, talking about it is just to get some people up on their hind legs for nothing.

Then the political strategy question is, what were the R gains from the people up on their hind legs? My guess was, negative: The Rs had those people anyway, and talking about abortion just cost the Rs a lot of votes otherwise. E.g., a lot of single women were scared. Then look at the two links and see how the women voted, scared. Maybe talking about abortion got some Rs some $ donations, but I have a tough time believing that that was an issue. Net, I just didn't 'get it' why so many Rs talked so much about abortion. Sure, maybe Rove helped W win an election in Texas that way, but in national politics? Gads.

Places where I wanted better gumment: Fighting two foreign wars for 10 years each. Gumment backing junk housing paper and, thus, blowing the housing bubble that crashed, wiped out financial assets and bank reserves, much as in The Great Depression. Our gumment did it to us. Gumment should have seen it coming and executed a soft landing. Supposedly both Clinton and W saw the problem but concluded that politically they couldn't do anything about it and, then, just hoped for the best. Bummer. What will gumment do next? See a big flu epidemic coming and not tell anyone because gumment leaders don't want to be blamed for the sting of a flu shot needle? I believe that we should be doing more with fission nuke power, but apparently we're not. I just don't think we have gumment nearly as good as we should.

Your question of what to do about it is on target. Of course the short answer is, have people demonstrate, have some politicians take up the positions, and have the voters vote them in. I thought that somewhere between 2008 and 2012 we would have had a few million people on the Mall in DC screaming for better gumment, but we didn't.

On Obama, if take some of his positions, e.g., his SFC interview of his intention to shut down all the coal fired electric generating plants, then 49% of our electric power and 23% of all of our energy (in a DoE report), then I was outraged. But he hasn't done it. To me there is a pattern: He says a lot of things; some of the things please some people, outrage some others, and get ignored by others. Then when that issue is out of the news, he says more things. Next to none of what he says actually leads to corresponding action. So, net his actions have not been nearly as bad as I feared. I still believe that he is a poor president. Then I have to conclude: I'm in the minority or nearly so -- he is still relatively popular. I don't see just why, but he is. Then this comes back to your issue of how to get better gumment: As long as Obama is as popular as he is, I don't see much hope for big demonstrations for something better. If nothing else really bad happens, then he will be able to have served for 8 years and leave often regarded as at least an okay president. So, our chances for something a lot better don't look good.

Then for the Rs, from the noise I hear from them on how to do better next time, I don't hear much that looks like it will win elections. Instead, the Rs are still talking to themselves about what their right wing dreams of and ignoring everyone else. I don't think that what they are saying is really good gumment, and I think it will lose in elections.

For the biased MSM, I don't have a clue what they will do.

To me, the saving grace is our founding fathers and our Constitution and, in particular, that the Rs have the House and the Ds have the Senate so that there is 'grid lock' and not much gets through and there's lots of talk that doesn't mean anything. In particular, Obama can ask Congress for anything he wants, but he will have a tough time getting back even a resolution in favor of apple pie. So, such grid lock is not good gumment but not the worst thing that could happen.