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It's nothing short of amazing the difference just one year can make in politics. A year ago, President Barack Obama was the toast of America — if not the world.
The majority of Americans had made it clear in the presidential election that they were tried of the Republican Party's hold on Washington. Or had they? We think not. What Americans had embraced during the 2008 campaign was not necessarily the Democratic Party, but rather the thing Obama had campaigned for — change. Unfortunately, rather than really changing, Washington missed the message. Our nation's lawmakers went right back to the business of partisan politics. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Americans are fed up with our political system and 58 percent of the respondents believe the country is headed in the wrong direction — an astonishing number just one year into a new president's term. All in all, Americans are still more worried about their paychecks than they are their health care, and the Democrats' failure to bring the economy back has hurt Obama. But the president and Democrats aren't the only ones who've been hurt in the last year. Americans ... pretty much all of us ... are tired of "Washington as usual." People are pretty tired of Republicans sitting on the sidelines and simply opposing anything the Democrats attempt. In short, our nation's capitol suffers from a severe case of total polarization. There's no consensus and most likely won't be with things as they are now. That's the message people ought to be getting from the fact that Massachusetts voters filled the seat vacated by Ted Kennedy's death with Republican Scott Brown. No, Massachusetts didn't suddenly become a hotbed of Republican support. But what did happen was people clearly said they're fed up. The same is happening here in Texas, but not to Democrats. No, this time it's the Republican-led Texas House that's in the crosshairs. The wave of anti-establishment fervor — as evidenced by the success of the grassroots "Tea Party" movement — has resulted in quite a few challenges to Republican incumbents. While we could spend days discussing just how conservative the Texas Legislature needs to be, there's no question in our minds that not only President Obama and the Democrats, but the GOP establishment had better pay attention. In other words, it's time to quit playing politics and do something for the betterment of all Americans.
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