The More Things Change...

*Sigh*

Your new House minority leaders:  Your old House majority leaders.

Boehner defeated Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana in a closed-door election among colleagues. The Ohio winner was expected to speak after elections for other leadership positions concluded. The vote tally was 168-27 with one vote for Texas Rep. Joe Barton.
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Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., won minority whip for the No. 2 GOP post when Republicans become the minority party in January. Blunt is currently the No. 3 House Republican, and he was favored to defeat Arizona conservative Rep. John Shadegg despite sentiment for fresh leadership faces.

86% of House Republicans think this year's electoral defeat was all about the war?  I overestimated their inclination to indulge in a bit of collective introspection and right the ship.

If Roy Blunt had an opportunity to pick up the core principal reversion ball and run with it, he's just fumbled.  From a statement released this morning by Congressman Blunt:

One-hundred-forty-nine Democrats demonstrated yesterday that they are willing to buck Nancy Pelosi.  We'll work each day to give those Democrats a viable alternative to her liberal, San Francisco agenda.
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As a party, we learned some hard lessons last week. But our ideas didn't lose -- we did. Today begins the rebirth of House Republicans' common sense agenda with a leadership team that is more unified than ever, ready to regain the trust of the American people, and ready to restore faith in our ideals.

By all means, please do push back on Pelosi's far-left agenda.  But the cursory lip service to lessons learned doesn't seem to indicate any recognition that the GOP needs to reclaim the fiscal high ground that its yielded in recent years.  If the path to "restoring faith" in Republican ideals involves nothing more than claiming unity and rejecting Pelosism, reclaiming the majority will be a long journey indeed.

That party leadership may be content to resist the will of the majority, waiting around for Pelosi-led mistakes to pile up and then pointing unified fingers is a disturbing thought, suggesting the Republican delegation not only may have failed to learn its lesson from this year's election, but also may have picked up a bad habit or two from the incumbent minority.

Confederate Yankee sums up this development in an even 1,000 words.

Comiserating:  Hot Air, Mary Katherine, Michelle Malkin, The Blogs of War