It isn't over yet

Lots of things are happening a lot faster than what many of us thought. Iverson stepped down leaving midget shoes to fill. I don’t necessarily mean that in a derogatory way, it just wasn’t meant to be. We’ve got Ted Sporer running for RPI Chair and I’m finally ready to accept him in that role – unless someone dynamic steps forward. Krusty has a good post about who else is mentioned.

We have Renee Schulte and Jeremy Taylor’s races getting closer and further away all at the same time. Absentee ballots and provisional ballots will continue to be counted for the next few days. Last I heard Renee is up slightly but Jeremy is down 40 votes. Now is the time to look back at the folks who kept talking about voter fraud and give them their due. We have no system in place to quickly verify the votes so we are stuck with the results. We absolutely need to trash the voter lists and start over from scratch. Is there any other way to guarantee our lists are clean?

We also have leadership challenges in some levels of the Republican minorities. Rants is being challenged by Paulsen. I don’t exactly know what I think of this. Paulsen was Rants’s right hand guy through all of this so I don’t want more of the same. At the same time, Rants also keeps things close to his vest so Paulsen may not have been tainted by a poor strategy – if there was one.

McKinley is taking on Wieck. I’m anxious to see how this goes. McKinley tried to get the leadership position the last go around but there weren’t enough votes. I don’t think there is anybody in the state who thinks Wieck did a stellar job this election cycle. I really don’t think he did anything. But we will have to see how Rogers, Hamerlinck, and Feenstra vote. I’m hoping all of those guys go with McKinley.

At the Federal level we may not be so lucky as to have a leadership challenge. I’ve heard no names dropped to take on Boehner. He must go. I’ll say it again. He must go. I’d like to see Pence take the position but his eyes are on the Caucus Chair. I hope he reconsiders. If not, King or someone like him needs to jump at the opportunity. We need a change in the House badly.

As for the Senate, I’m not very confident. McConnell hasn’t been much of anything and I don’t see that being challenged much either. Where are our stars? Are they being purposely subdued or do we just not have any true leaders? What I definitely do know is that we need outspoken, unabashed Republicans in leadership.