If you talk to any of my Democratic colleagues who lost that year, they would tell that gun control was one of the major contributory factors in the loss of their seats.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Hillary Clinton's loss has exposed the lack of Democratic power in this country at all levels.
In my lifetime, we have lost a President, a Civil Rights leader and a Presidential candidate - all to gun violence.
Gun violence has cost us too many political leaders, and hardly ever the worst ones.
I said after 2006 that Republicans didn't just lose our majority, we lost our way. I mean, our party walked away from the principles that men in our national governing majority first in 1980 and again in 1994, and the American people walked away from us.
How did abortion and birth control impact the congressional race of Dan Maffei and Ann Marie Buerkle or the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? I don't know. But I think the so-called social issues were front and center in the minds of voters. These issues may indeed have lost the Republicans some elections.
As President Obama is inaugurated for a second time, the biggest political surprise is that gun control is now key to his political legacy.
Senators say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets.
In Washington, D.C., in 2006, Democrats had long since given up on the war in Iraq in terms of any tangible political support for it. The new factor was the Republicans were beginning to give up as well, and they were truly challenging the strategy and the lack of success.
Well the truth is, Republicans didn't just lose a few elections, we lost our way.
Understanding the long, sordid history of gun control in America is key to understanding the dangers of disarming.
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