The predominate view in the mainstream press was that Lugar’s loss was a tragedy, a sign that the Tea Party was taking over the Republican Party, and that the world as we know it, is coming to an end.

The thing I find interesting is that only two weeks before the Indiana primary, Pennsylvania held its primary and two moderate Democratic members of Congress were ousted by far-left liberal Democrats, and the same press was virtually silent about any alleged Democrat Party march to the left.

First of all, in Pennsylvania’s newly drawn 12th Congressional District, the matchup was between the very liberal Democratic Congressman Mark Critz and moderate Democratic Congressman Jason Altmire. Altmire wasn’t considered liberal enough by many Democrats because he had voted against Obamacare and against Obama’s Cap and Trade legislation. The very liberal Critz defeated the moderate Altmire by four points.

And in Pennsylvania’s redrawn 17th Congressional District, the matchup was liberal trial lawyer Matt Cartwright vs the longest serving Democrat in Pennsylvania, moderate Tim Holden. Holden, like Altmire, had voted against Obamacare and against Cap and Trade, and was even pro-life to boot. He just wasn’t liberal enough. The far-left Cartwright crushed the moderate Holden by 14 points.

So where were all the stories about the Democratic Party being taken over by the Occupy Movement (allegedly the Left’s version of the Tea Party), or George Soros, or Bill Maher, or Michael Moore? Where were the articles about the Democratic party cleansing itself of its moderates, and marching lockstep to the tune of the Left?

The fact is, both parties are in transition. In general, the Republicans in Congress are getting more conservative (thank God). And Democrats in Congress are getting more liberal (they would say progressive – same thing).

How about some balance in the media’s coverage of this phenomena. I’m just saying.

What he’s actually doing is running perhaps the most divisive Presidential campaign in American history – attempting to pit one group of Americans against another.

The Obama Administration, for example, lashes out at Republicans for allegedly attempting to disenfranchise African Americans and Hispanics just because Republicans favor voter photo ID laws. In reality, Republicans just want to make sure that every person who votes only votes one time, and that those who vote are actually citizens of this country. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. (We’ve required photo IDs in Ohio for years now and there’s no indication that anyone’s being disenfranchised. And if it works here, why can’t it work just as well in North Carolina and Texas – states Obama’s Justice Department is currently fighting similar efforts.)

Another ludicrous charge by the Obama campaign is that Republicans are somehow engaged in a “war on women.” Supposed proof of this is that most Republicans oppose Obamacare bureaucrats requiring Catholic hospitals to provide abortion-inducing drugs and sterilizations even though such practices violate strongly held tenets of the Catholic faith.

The Obama campaign is also trying to convince young people, especially college students, that Republicans are out to get them by allegedly wanting them to pay higher student loan interest rates. The truth is, Republicans in the House just passed a bill to keep the interest rates on student loans down at their current 3.4% level, but which actually pays for it by cutting funds from an Obamacare slush fund, rather than just adding the extra cost to the national debt, or raising taxes as Democrats (including Obama) want to do.

And finally, seniors. Two key programs that are important to most senior citizens in America, Social Security and Medicare, are under severe financial strain. Rather than work with Republicans to find a solution to the impending bankruptcy of both programs, Obama has cynically chosen to frighten seniors and bludgeon his political opponents with overcharged rhetoric and hysteria. He tacitly approved of over-the-top TV ads showing a Paul Ryan look-alike pushing poor granny in a wheelchair over a cliff. Subtle.

The hope and change Obama who famously said “there are no red states or blue states, just the United States” is clearly no longer with us. He’s been replaced by the Great Divider Obama who is cynically practicing the politics of envy and division. Fortunately, I don’t believe it will work. The American people have had enough.

What would a Pelosi II look like? What would it mean for the country? And most importantly, how can we keep it from happening? And why would John Boehner be so candid with his analysis?

Let me take the last one first. Some Republicans have been critical of John for even giving the Democrats a one in three chance. After all the Democrats did send out a fundraising letter trying to take advantage of “even the Republican Speaker gives us reasonable odds of taking back the House.”

I think John is concerned that most of the political attention and Republican fundraising effort to date has been towards winning the Presidency and the Senate. A lot of Republican supporters just assume that Republicans will maintain control of the House. Evidence of this overconfidence is that even though there are 242 Republicans and only 190 Democrats in the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) so far has outraised the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) $19.6 million to $18.1 million. The good news is that the Democrats (being Democrats) have spent more of their campaign money than Republicans, and therefore Republicans actually have more cash on hand.

Okay, so Pelosi II, what would it look like? The best way of predicting what a person or group of people will do in the future, is to examine what they’ve done in the past. And when Nancy Pelosi ran the House, we got bigger government, huge increases in spending, crippling debt, and growth-stifling over-regulation.

Specifically, we got an $868 billion so-called Stimulus Package that grew government exponentially, but not jobs in the private sector. We got a trillion dollar Obamacare which Pelosi inanely said needed to be passed so we could find out what was in the bill, and which the U.S. Supreme Court may well strike down as an unconstitutional power-grab. We got Dodd-Frank gargantuan overregulation of the banking and financial services industry which has resulted in businesses having great difficulty in borrowing money and expanding to create jobs. And we got Cap and Trade passed in the House, which would have given an already EPA-on-steroids even more power to stifle energy production and economic growth. (Fortunately, even Harry Reid’s Senate refused to pass it.)

Is there any chance that Nancy Pelosi has seen the error of her far-left ways and would govern more responsibly if given another chance? In my opinion, not a chance. First of all, it’s traditional in Congress that when you’re the Speaker and your party is rejected at the polls (and the Democrats took a shellacking in 2010) you graciously step aside and let a new person lead the troops. Not Nancy Pelosi. To virtually everyone’s surprise, she tenaciously held on to power and continues to rule Democrats in the House with an iron fist. Dissention in her ranks is punished immediately, and mercilessly. Her rhetoric is consistently hard-left, and class warfare is the order of the day.

Make no mistake, a Pelosi II would look a whole lot like a Pelosi I. And therefore it must be avoided at all cost. The best way to ensure that we don’t have a Speaker Pelosi future is for Republicans to clearly articulate a positive vision for our nation’s future, and fairly and accurately remind folks what Pelosi did in the past, and by implication, what she’d do in the future. And be sure to emphasize what a truly nightmare scenario it would be, if once again we had Nancy Pelosi controlling the House, Harry Reid the Senate, and Barack Obama the Executive Branch of government (and appointing Supreme Court Judges for four more years.)

Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.

First of all, I think the majority of Americans are ready for a change, from the change. A lot of people who bought into all that hope and change, aren’t satisfied with where it’s gotten us.

In my view, Mitt Romney should stick with a consistently positive message as to how he intends to get the economy moving in the right direction again, and thus get Americans back to work. And how he intends to get the out-of-control spending in Washington under control again, and deal seriously with our crippling debt. That’s it. Don’t get distracted with stupid questions you get asked about dogs on the roof, or vacations in France, or etch-a-sketches, or anything else. The economy, jobs, and spending. Stay positive.

At the same time, the Romney campaign has a responsibility to remind voters why Barack Obama doesn’t deserve re-election, and what a second Obama term would likely look like.

And here’s the kicker. You do it by using Obama’s own words against him. Candidate Obama said he’d do A. President Obama instead did B. Keep it clear, concise, fair, and most importantly, true. And use Obama’s own words.

After all, he promised us he’d be different. At his announcement that he was running for President, he criticized the broken promises other candidates made, saying, “Too many times after an election is over and the confetti’s swept away, all those promises fade from memory.” Let’s take a look at some of the many examples where Obama promised one thing, but then did another.

Candidate Obama promised to “eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses.” Instead, he’s attempted to raise them and his shameless demagoguery about a so-called Buffett tax is in reality nothing more than an increase in capital gains taxes, affecting mostly, you guessed it, small business owners.

Obama promised to ban lobbyists in his Administration, but it’s infested with them. In fact, 40 former lobbyists fill senior positions in the Obama Administration, including three members of his Cabinet and his former CIA Director.

“As President I will close Guantanamo Bay.” I have visited the facility where dangerous terrorists are held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on three separate occasions, and I can assure you that it’s still there (and in my view it should be.)

Obama in a speech pandering to the League of United Latin American Citizens, promised that he would make comprehensive immigration reform “a top priority in my first year as President.” He didn’t.

After criticizing so-called super PACs as being essentially the spawn of the devil, Obama orchestrated one being set up for himself.

On Obamacare, let’s not let people forget that he famously promised “we will work on this process publicly, it will be on C-SPAN.” Contrary to this promise, virtually everything was done behind closed doors – the wheeling and dealing, the arm twisting, and the infamous “Cornhusker Kickback” and “Louisiana Purchase.”

And perhaps the most damaging broken promise Obama made was relative to the deficit. On February 23rd, 2009, one month after being sworn in as President, Barack Obama said, “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office.” Not only did he break this pledge, a PLEDGE, by not cutting the deficit in half, or at all for that matter, but he added $5 trillion to the debt.

That’s only a partial list of Obama’s inconsistencies, and as I said earlier, the Romney campaign should methodically and accurately use Obama’s own words to expose his failed promises. And candidate Romney should stick to a positive message of how he’ll get America moving in the right direction again.

Now let’s win.

So unless you’re one of a relatively small number of Americans who got an extension to file their taxes later, or unless you’re one of a quite large number of Americans who paid no federal income taxes at all (almost one half of us!) you’re relieved that it’s over – at least for 2011.

So this is probably a good time to consider what changes could be made to make a very flawed tax code and tax collection system a little less insane. Here are some possibilities.

Move tax day from April 15th to November, in close proximity to Election Day. This would result in taxes being in the forefront of peoples’ minds when they go into the voting booth.

Lower the rate of taxes on people who actually pay them, but broaden the base. It’s not healthy for the nation to have nearly half the population with no skin in the game.

Eliminate the withholding of taxes. The argument is, people are less conscious of how big a bite taxes actually take from a person’s income when it is deducted from their paycheck (sort of like the frog in the pot with the water getting warmer and warmer and the poor frog not noticing until he’s cooked.) If we actually had to write a check every quarter to the IRS, the two-by-four upside the head would get our attention on how much the government is actually taking from us.

Or my favorite, let’s go to a flat tax, or better yet let’s dump the tax code and get rid of the IRS altogether, and move to a national sales tax. I’ve been a co-sponsor of legislation that would sunset the tax code a couple of years down the road. This would require Congress to think seriously about whether we should keep the existing tax code, or make dramatic changes (the flat tax or sales tax for example.)

Of course our current President has made some suggestions about changing taxes as well. He and his allies’ latest effort is the so-called Buffet Tax. Interestingly Charles Krauthammer (one of my favorite political commentators) decided to run the numbers and see what effect the Buffet Tax would have. Krauthammer found that

The reality is, none of these tax changes, for good or bad, are likely to happen before the American people decide this November, in which direction they want to take our country. I’m hoping and praying that they’ll say, it’s time for action. We’re not under-taxed, government over-spends. Simplify the tax code, or get rid of it altogether. Stop taking so much of our hard-earned money. We’ve had enough. Now go to Washington and git er done!

p.s. On an unrelated item, the space shuttle Discovery was flown by a 747 over Washington yesterday to its final resting place at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Annex at Dulles Airport. We snapped some pictures and I thought I’d share them with you.

And one of the most important decisions that Romney will have to make in his quest for the Presidency, is who to select as a running mate. For what it’s worth, I think that Rob Portman would be a great choice. He’d be a tremendous Vice Presidential candidate, and if God forbid, tragedy befell a Romney Administration and the Vice President had to step up and fill the position of President, no one, in my opinion, would be more prepared to take on the awesome responsibilities of that office than Rob Portman.

I’ve been fortunate enough to know and work with Rob Portman for more than 20 years now. We represented adjoining Congressional districts in the House of Representatives for more than a decade. Sharing the responsibilities of representing Greater Cincinnati in Congress for all those years gave me considerable insight into the real Rob Portman.

He’s honest, hard-working, smart, detail-oriented and dedicated to his wonderful family. Perhaps his greatest asset is his wife Jane, who is a leader in her own right.

Perhaps most importantly, the Romney campaign won’t have to worry about getting Rob Portman up to speed to fulfill his role as a Vice Presidential candidate. He knows the issues inside and out. In fact, he’s so knowledgeable and such a good debater that when the Bush/Cheney campaign and the McCain campaign were looking for a top-notch debater to fill in as their debate prep opponent, they chose Rob Portman to play that critical role. Cheney even commented that Portman was a tougher (and better) opponent than Joe Lieberman was in the real debate!

In addition, Rob Portman has already been vetted for a job in the Executive Branch of the government – twice. First, when he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for the Cabinet level position of U.S. Trade Representative, after leaving Congress. And then when he was again confirmed by the United States Senate to fill the critical position of Director of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget.) And when you consider how critical it is that we get our $16 trillion plus budget debt under control, experience in this area is very important.

On the political front, it’s been pointed out many times that no Republican has ever won the Presidency without carrying Ohio. And there’s no question that Rob Portman could be critical in ensuring that Ohio goes for Romney in November. Looking back at Rob’s own Senate race in 2010, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher was leading Rob by double-digits when that race got underway. By the time Election Day rolled around, Rob Portman had turned his underdog candidacy into an 18 point victory, and carried 82 of Ohio’s 88 counties. He could do it again.

Look, there are some other great candidates Mitt Romney will consider to be his running mate, among them Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley to name but a few. But after he’s considered the pros and cons of each one, I would submit that the best choice he could make is Senator Rob Portman.

Now let’s win this election and get our country back on the right track!