How to stop the bleeding

The WSJ says:

[Although] Speaker Dennis Hastert has already announced he won't stand for minority leader[,] [o]thers in the leadership are claiming to have learned their lesson and promise a new beginning ... Republicans might [] recall what happened to Democrats when they tried to regain the House in 1996 by running with the same leadership and agenda that had been ousted in 1994. Those Democrats failed, despite Bill Clinton's victory at the top of the ticket, because too many voters saw the same old story.

That's absolutely right, in my view. This is an awful thing to do to John Boehner, but as I see it, we need to avoid the mistakes the Dems made in 1994 by accepting the voter's verdict, and thus draw a line under the 109th Congress. Or, in point of fact, hermetically seal ourselves from it, to the extent possible, which means that the entire surviving leadership team should be relegated to the back benches, and anyone who was a committee chairman should be passed over for ranking member. That carries some short-term costs, but apart from Iraq, the behavior of the last Congress was the other issue in this election, and we have to make it clear to voters - as Dems did not after 1994 - that we got the message loud and clear, and that we're willing and able to clean house.

(The same WSJ focuses on the House, and says that McConell should still be elected minority leader in the Senate. I agree. Although I read an interesting argument somewhere yesterday that McConnell should be passed over for minority leader because he isn't dynamic enough, my counterargument would be that since we find outselves in the minority, you want someone who has a fairly comprehensive grasp of legislative procedure, because there are times when we're going to need and want to make business very difficult for the majority in the Senate.)

I'm totally with MKH on this - "Pence and Shadegg. We need new blood, real bad, and these guys have proved themselves as supporters of the things we actually believe."