Sorry I have not written to you in some time, but I figured you were busy lining up a moving company to clear out your place in Washington, while you and your staff shredded two years of files that littered your offices.
Hopefully you are not taking the defeat too hard. Being with the incumbent party when the economy is in the tank generally does not lend itself well to your re-election chances, just as the downfall of the economy in 2008 did not exactly endear the voting public to the man you having been trading the district seat with, Steve Chabot.
Some of your compadres on the Hill have not been quite so gracious in defeat. I would like to quote this gentleman, James Oberstar of Minnesota, in a New York Times article today:
"I expected to leave at some point, that I'd make the decision in due course. I'm not angry; I'm disappointed."
Now, I would be the first to tell you that the American voter tends to be fickle and shallow, voting on short term whims and desires and forcing politicians to base their platforms on the headlines of the day rather than the long term problems that are troubling our country. However, when I see a statement as arrogant as this, implying that Mr. Oberstar has a pre-ordained right to decide as an elected official how long he is given the privilege of serving the good people of northeast Minnesota, it makes me rethink this bias. The honorable gentleman from Minnesota seems to have assumed that because the voters saw fit to elect him to office every year since 1975 to represent them in Washington that he has somehow miraculously attained tenure and is immune from being removed from office at the will of the people. (Or the well funded political action committees and/or corporations that funded his opponent that defeated him, depending on your perspective)
I say, thank you for your many years of service to this country, Mr. Oberstar. Now take your defeat like a man and go do what most of the other defeated incumbents are going to do...
Rent an office, hang a shingle, register as a lobbyist, and start dialing for dollars....
