Sad, but true.

“Republican campaign consultants have been publicly expressing a great deal of concern that the ‘GOP brand’ has been damaged, or at least tarnished. For top strategists to be so candid about their party’s problems is fairly unusual, and it reflects just how urgent they consider the party’s need to redefine itself as it prepares for the 2008 campaign.”

GOP pollster Glen Bolger explains: “We’re still good on taxes and values, but have big problems on ‘less spending’ and ‘less government,’ and there are cracks in the wall of our strong national security fortress. The other tarnish is that for a long time, Democrats were the party of the professional politicians, while Republicans came to Washington to fix the mess and go home. The scandals and the way Republicans ran the House mean that we have been more interested in power than in doing what is right — which means we are no different than that which we replaced in 1994.”

So true, and it’s an important point to make for two reasons.

First, and most obvious, is that Republicans need to get the fact that they were defeated because of their scandals and profligate attitude toward spending.

Second, and more importantly, Republicans (and the whole nation) need to set aside this silly notion that the election was a referendum on Iraq and that Democrats now have some sort of a mandate to dismantle the war effort.  That’s baloney.  The election was, as the article above suggests, a referendum on corrupt Republicans who were governing as though they were liberals.

Put simply, if Republicans had simply avoided scandal and made serious efforts to cut back on government spending over the last two years they’d still have a majority in Congress.  It really is that simple, though though that’s not what the Dems and their media allies want you to believe.  They want you to believe that the election was about the war and not spending.  Why?  Because they want to end the war and increase government spending (along with your taxes), naturally.