Interestingly enough - - and unsurprisingly, the things I read and heard from the Republicans last night revolved around a LOT of finger pointing.

The most popular blame game? Blaming the Republicans who stayed home and did not vote. That’s why they experienced such a huge upset…because Republicans stayed home.

It’s quite possible that Republicans did stay home. As a former card carrying RNC member, I have to be honest and say that the thought of staying home occurred to me more than once over the past several weeks. It wasn’t until the night before the elections that I decided that staying home wasn’t the answer - not for me.

But let’s look at WHY I entertained the thought of staying home, and quite possibly why the Republicans feel they had a low voter turnout. I can sum it up on a short sentence.

The Republican party could not rally their base.

The Republican base is too small to win a national election. With their hard core agenda, the Republican party was not able to turn the Independents in their direction - and turned the Moderates, like myself, away completely.

Let me give you just one small example of what I’m talking about.

Last night, when the Republicans started becoming aware that their back-end were about to be handed to them on a silver platter - - Tony Snow, the White House Press Secretary, made a statement that the President was, understandably, dissapointed - but was already making plants to work with the the new Congress, in a bi-partisan way, to start working on the Guest Worker Program.

If there was one thing that depressed the GOP base this last year and allowed Independents not to be converted, it was the GOP’s total failure to do something real about the borders.

And the number one person for that lack of leadership was the President.

The GOP has some hard lessons to learn. When conservatives recognize the ‘base’ is too small to swing a national election and that the voters soundly reject their hard-core agenda, they might be back in contention. Reagan won big because he knew this. Instead of blaming others for this loss, forego the dogged insistence that the GOP way is the only way and come to terms with the fact the majority of voters don’t agree with the GOP. By not giving a little, they gave it all away.

The people have spoken. Tomorrow is a new day. The Dems won - now they have to show their cards.. they say they have a plan? Now is the time to see it.