The Principles have left the room...as to voting for a group.

Did a 3rd Party Candidate (Libertarian) siphon away votes from the Republicans?   This is how the "Right" loses every election.

As you say, life will go on with Tax and Spend.  Those who are Elected will eat caviar and bathe in champagne.

Liberals have figured out they must support more conservative Dems. Moderate Republicans are busy savaging Tea Party or Conservative candadites, but the Moderates will saying almost nothing bad about the Dems. The Republican party is nothing more than Liberal Lite.

I would love to see 4 or 5 parties competing for a seat.  The 2 party system has run its course and is failing all Americans.

The two party system is institutionalized in many states giving a strong advantage to the status quo.  The presence of a third party on a ballot in a general election is a divided opposition that will continue to elect liberals as it did in Virginia this week.  

I welcome the participation of candidates of any stripe in the party primary elections (in states that have them).  This is where ideas and platforms should be vetted and argued among the voters.  A hard working Libertarian or Tea Party candidate can gain the party nomination in the primary (such as Marco Rubio in his run for the Senate against party bosses in my state).  But after the primary - we should support the party nominee in the general election.  Any third party activity in the general election will doom the Republicans to permanent back bench status and make us irrelevant as a force in government.

Good question, Bill.  I am shocked that the RNC did not fund the Virginia Governor's race appropriately.  (one third of their normal level) My only thought is that they did not think Ken Cuccinelli had a chance in the race. Another unforgivable lost opportunity.

In 2012, 23 of the 33 Senate races were Democrat seats up for grabs.  Four Republican victories would have changed the majority in the Senate and dumped Harry Reid as Majority Leader.  I don't think we gained a single seat - not 1.  We spent 1.7 billion dollars on Romney for President - is anybody telling me we could not gain a single Senate seat when two thirds of the seats on offer were Democrat incumbents?  Horsepucky!

Harry Reid is the top obstructionist in the Senate.  We didn't try to remove him in 2012 by gaining the majority and we didn't try to defeat him in 2010 for re-election by supporting Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee. Despite the fact that Nevada was perhaps hardest hit with foreclosures and unemployment.  Of course Reid was vulnerable.  The Republicans should have been able to elect a ham sandwich in Nevade in 2010.  The Majority Leader in the Senate decides what questions come to a vote.  He alone is the reason we didn't have a Congressional budget for four years.  Although, to be fair, I am not sure we have had a formal budget since Bill Clinton was in office.  Having no true budget when we are borrowing 42% of every dollar we spend is criminally negligent in my opinion.

The Republican Party couldn't agree upon the Sermon on the Mount.  Too many in the party (particularly the leadership) think the Tea Party is the enemy.  They are, in my view, just as wrong as they could be.  

So to answer your question, Bill, I am appalled at the decisions of my party and the lack of cohesive message or leadership being presented.  But they are my party and the only hope for the future.  Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey engineered a Republican victory in the House in 1994 by virtually nationalizing the House races, despite conventional wisdom that all politics is local (TIP O'Neil's phrase).  The liberals are vulnerable in 2014 and 2016. We should be fighting Obamacare in the voting booths rather than in the House of Representatives.  

Somewhere in the past forty years, serving special interests in order to get re-elected became more important than the oath of office each elected official takes when being sworn into the office they were elected to.  Both Republicans and Democrats are at fault.  The tax and spend model of the liberals buys votes and wins elections now - but it is unsustainable.  The conservative values that should define the Republican party and the economic engine that made America the greatest nation in the World for a century still hold promise for the future.  But we may bleed out as a nation before we wake up to the dangers we face - foreign and domestic to coin a phrase.

The US Constitution provides at its magnificent core a system for limited national government.  We have ignored its provisions and created an abusive, intrusive nanny-state micro-managing monster inside the beltway in Washington DC that will consume all of us and our children's futures if we do not act with vision and responsibility now.

Wake up, America.