While admittedly the conservatives found themselves spending a good deal of time just beating back near-traitorous haters when Bush took office (each time), they certainly did take negative notice of the campaign promises he didn't carry out - including smaller government, less spending, and so on. They were angry, stayed angry, and this was one of McCain's big problems. Palin helped with the pro-life/pro-christian conservatives, but nobody believed McCain would do better than Bush in terms of eliminating the deficit and shrinking the federal government, and being a genuine conservative in areas that matter - to conservatives, at least.

you used the term "near-traitorous" for your fellow citizens. that's a good example of why the con/repubs got a beating in '06 and again this year.

No, its not. Ineffectiveness in pursuing even the platform of their own diehards, corruption, consistently bad press, and razor thin margins of victory - on either side - are reasons why in 2006 the legislature tipped every so slightly over the line of being 50% republican with republican control to being 50% democrat with democrat control, and why some swing states went as far as 53% (wow, a whole 3%!) democrat in this election.

Perhaps you don't live in a blue state, but if you did, you would have seen behavior by liberals that was but one step from yelling sic semper tyrannis in a crowded theater. People actually wishing the nation ill because they didn't like its current leadership. Fellow citizens? Barely.

Bush turned the USA into a country that invaded without provocation, condones and orders torture, disregarded our own Constitution, and diminished our standing in the world. pointing that out and being heart-broken about it is not "near traitorus." that's why you lost in '06 and again this year.

The fact is, BenK is the one who has to explain the loss. You know, because his side lost. It could not possibly be because Americans wised up, or voted on the issues of peace and prosperity (as we did in the last two hundred years of elections). And after his side lost the popular vote in 2000 by a half million, he is arguing that 2006 and 2008 were 'razor thin.' And I know that he is believing it just as hard as he can, but where on earth is there even one example of this 'behavior by liberals' he is talking about? That is how arguments by assertion are maintained -- by repetition.