Tea and sympathy

The Republicans took back the House last night, but voters at least had the smarts to give two of the craziest Tea Party candidates – Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell and Sharron "Take your rape and turn it into lemonade" Angle – a pass.

The Teabaggers and GOP have yet to offer substantive ideas on how to balance the budget and kick-start the economy. It all sounds great in speeches and at rallies where people are fired up about "taking back America" (although I still don't know who they're taking it back from), but I'm looking for specifics.

The Teabaggers wanted to send a message about throwing out career politicians and lobbyists, yet sent two of the biggest – Dan Coats from Indiana and Rob Portman from Ohio – back to D.C. Makes no damn sense at all.

Meanwhile, Georgia has elected another career politician, Nathan Deal, as its new governor seemingly unconcerned that he forgot to mention he was $4 million in debt on his campaign disclosure forms. If he can't manage his own money, I can't wait to see what he does with state funds. But he had an (R) next to his name, so that's all that matters.

The Republicans have got two years to hang themselves and judging what happened under their last watch, it's going to be a real short rope and an even shorter drop. Maybe they'll have their spending cut ideas in place by the time January rolls around, but I'm not getting my hopes up. All I see is political gridlock ahead.