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We learn more about Florida’s Senator-elect. Steve Hayes spent time with Marco Rubio during Rubio’s campaign, and offers an impressive portrayal. The excerpts from a speech that Rubio gave are electrifying.

…If anything, Rubio is underrated. Some Democrats seem to understand this. That fact, probably more than anything else, explains why the White House encouraged Bill Clinton as early as last spring to use his influence to get Meek out of the race and clear the way for Charlie Crist to run as a Democrat. 

No Republican in the country offers a more compelling defense of American exceptionalism and a more powerful indictment of the Obama administration than Marco Rubio. He has had lots of practice. He ran against Obama more than he ran against either of his two opponents. On the first full day I spent with him, Rubio never once mentioned Meek, and he spoke about Charlie Crist only when responding to a question—this in a day that included a lunchtime speech at a fundraiser with Mitt Romney, a lengthy debate prep session, and two additional speeches in Plant City that evening. 

Rubio speaks extemporaneously and usually without notes. And while his remarks often cover the same broad set of issues and sometimes repeat phrases, no two speeches are ever the same. When Rubio addressed several hundred local Republicans in Plant City at the Red Rose Hotel, in a room just down from a cheesy lounge with fake stars on the ceiling, it was just another event. He had done thousands of similar events and given hundreds of similar speeches before this one. He spoke for nearly 40 minutes, and the audience listened intently to every word. 

I do not believe you have to demonize people in order to win elections. Quite frankly, I think that many of these people in Washington who are making bad policy are generally well intentioned. But I think they have two things wrong: a fundamental misunderstanding of how our economy functions and a fundamental misunderstanding of America’s role in the world. And those two things are what led to these policies.

Number one—The economy functions like this: Jobs are not created by politicians, they are created by people that start businesses or expand existing businesses. And the job of government is to create the environment where doing that becomes easier, not harder. Number two—America’s role in the world is pretty straightforward. The world is safer and it is better when America is the strongest country in the world. …

Rubio’s background allows him to make these cutting arguments without any suggestion that Obama is somehow un-American. Many politicians understand American exceptionalism on an intellectual level, but Rubio feels it. 

In most every other country in the world, if your parents were workers, you grew up to be a worker. If your parents were employees, you grew up to be an employee. But in this country, the worker can become an owner, the employee can become an employer. It happens every single day. And that is what sets us apart. .??.??. I am a generation removed from something very different from this. My parents weren’t born in a society like this. They were born in a place where what you were going to be when you grew up was decided for you. It all depended on who your parents were, who your grandparents were—how connected you were. .??.??. My dad was a bartender. I always look for the bar at these events. He stood behind that for 30-some-odd years, working events just like this. I often have told people that at events like this that my dad worked, there were two people standing behind tables, the bartender behind the bar and the speaker behind the podium. He literally worked 35 or 40 years—on New Year’s Eves and holidays and late nights, into his seventies—behind the bar, so that one day his children could sit at a table at one of these events. Or even better, stand behind a podium like this. 

But I never remember feeling limited by any of that. Because this is a nation where anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything. I never remember feeling that because my last name ended with a vowel there was only so far I could go in life. This is an extraordinary country. And so on a personal level, what this race is about for me is whether my kids are going to get to raise their children in a country that looks like the one my parents were born in or in a country like the one that I was born in. It’s literally that stark of a choice. …

In the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone examines where Republicans won.

…But they made really sweeping gains in state legislatures, where candidate quality makes less difference. According to the National Conference on State Legislatures, Republicans gained about 125 seats in state Senates and 550 seats in state Houses — 675 seats in total. That gives them more seats than they’ve won in any year since 1928.

…All those gains are hugely significant in redistricting. When the 2010 Census results are announced next month, the 435 House seats will be reapportioned to the states, and state officials will draw new district lines in each state. A nonpartisan commission authorized by voters this year will do the job in (Democratic) California, but in most states it’s up to legislators and governors (although North Carolina’s governor cannot veto redistricting bills).

…This will make a difference not just in redistricting. State governments face budget crunches and are supposed to act to help roll out Obamacare. Republican legislatures can cut spending and block the rollout. “I won,” Barack Obama told Republican leaders seeking concessions last year. This year he didn’t.

Mark Greenbaum, in Salon.com, looks at redistricting and how this will likely strengthen Republican seats in Congress.

To everyone’s surprise, Nancy Pelosi wants to return as the Democrats’ leader in the next Congress. But if she’s hoping for a big Democratic year in 2012 that would give her the speaker’s gavel back, she might want to look closer at Tuesday’s results: Based on the breadth and scope of their losses, it is going be almost impossible for Democrats to retake the House in the next 10 years.

While Democrats’ historic loss of at least 61 seats (results are still pending in a handful of districts) can be traced to a diverse set of factors, the majority of the Democrats defeated were either elected to Republican-friendly seats in the wave elections of 2006 and 2008 or were long-term incumbents who represented heavily GOP districts. The seats in that latter category are likely gone for good, while many in the former are clustered in a handful of states where GOP state-level gains will ensure that they are fortified in next year’s redistricting trials, making them even more difficult for Democrats to take back than they were entering the ’06 and ’08 cycles.

…Looking at Tuesday’s results from another angle, around two-thirds of the seats Democrats lost were held by members elected in the ’06 and ’08 elections. With a small handful of exceptions, nearly all of these districts are Republican-leaning, though most not overwhelmingly so. They represented the spoils of Democrats’ own wave elections. As currently drawn, many of them could theoretically be competitive in 2012, but Republican state legislative and gubernatorial gains could help the GOP use the forthcoming redistricting to fortify many of them. …

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Tunku Varadarajan gives a great overall vision for a closer relationship between India and the US.

…By far the most important geostrategic relationship for the next generation will be that of U.S.-India-Japan. As Charles Hill, a professor at Yale, put it to me, “This will need to be the first true democratic league of great powers.”  But the Indian political and strategic leadership does not think that Obama gets this. After all, he has been distinctly frosty in his dealings with America’s democratic allies (Israel being one example, and Britain, to a lesser extent, another), while making quite the point of reaching out to tyrannies and dictatorships. Indians wonder why the U.S., under his leadership, seems to lack the clarity and confidence of its Founding Ideals, in comparison to the Bush approach to India.

Broadly, there are three problem-themes that will rear their heads when Obama sits down to talk to Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister. The first is security, mainly naval. What to do about China’s blatant aim to make the maritime waters of East and South-East Asia into the PRC’s internal territory? And what, the Indians will ask, does Washington make of China’s flanking “embrace” of India?

…Second: What worries India most—and this is a worry shared by Britain, Israel, Japan, and others—is the sense that Obama has stepped America back from support and defense of democracies in his bid to distance himself from the Bush-era emphasis on democratization. This is getting urgent, because some otherwise sane intellectuals in India (and in other parts of the world) are starting to become enamored of the “Chinese model,” i.e., one of open economics and closed politics. In an era of economic despair, it is easy for vulnerable or inchoate democracies to follow the Chinese siren of growth-above-freedom. India, a mature democracy that is also now a dynamic economy, is a philosophical counterpoint to China.  One would think that the United States, as a part of its global forensic rhetoric, would use every opportunity to stress the virtues of the “Indian,” i.e., democratic, growth model; and yet, have we ever heard Obama speak up clearly in its favor? …

The Hindustan Times reports that Obama’s teleprompter use was a surprise to Indians.

Namaste India! In all likelihood that will be silver-tongued Barack Obama’s opening line when he addresses the Indian parliament next week. But to help him pronounce Hindi words correctly will be a teleprompter which the US president uses ever so often for his hypnotising speeches.

…Obama will make history for more than one reason during the Nov 6-9 visit. This will be the first time a teleprompter will be used in the nearly 100-feet high dome-shaped hall that has portraits of eminent national leaders adorning its walls.

Indian politicians are known for making impromptu long speeches and perhaps that is why some parliament officials, who did not wish to be named, sounded rather surprised with the idea of a teleprompter for Obama.

“We thought Obama is a trained orator and skilled in the art of mass address with his continuous eye contact,” an official, who did not wish to be identified because of security restrictions, said. …

Peter Wehner comments on the President’s response to the elections.

…If you listened to the president, though, the “shellacking” was because of process rather than substance. ObamaCare, he assured us, is a sparkling, wondrous law; the only downside to it was the horse-trading that went on to secure its passage. They would be “misreading the election,” the president helpfully informed Republicans, if they decide to “relitigate the arguments of the last two years.”

…And what set of Obama remarks would be complete without the requisite lecturing — in this case, on the importance of “civility in our discourse” and the importance of being able to “disagree without being disagreeable.” This admonition comes after Obama, during the last few days of the campaign, referred to his opponents as “enemies,” hinted that the Tea Party Movement is tinged with racism, charged Republicans with being dishonest, and accused, without a shred of evidence, the Chamber of Commerce of using illegal money to support Republican candidates across the country. But never mind. After his victory in 2008, Obama’s message to Republicans was: “I won.” …

…What we saw today was less a president than a dogmatist — a man who appears to have an extraordinary capacity to hermetically seal off events and evidence that call into question his governing philosophy, his policies, and his wisdom. The election yesterday was above all a referendum on the president’s policies, yet his big takeaway was not to relitigate his agenda. …

…It is the trend of Obama’s mind — rigid, ideological, and self-justifying — that should worry Democrats. The author of one of the worst political debacles in American history seems to have learned almost nothing from it.

Mort Zuckerman tells us about a spectacular editorial by Democrat Senator Evan Bayh. If only we could get Republicans to get on board! 

…The exit polls conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool show that the economy was the dominant issue, rated at 62 percent, while healthcare was only at 18 percent. Minority voters remained loyal (9 in 10 blacks and 2 in 3 among Hispanics), but everywhere else Obama was deserted. Independents and women fled the Democrats; among white women, no less than 57 percent chose the GOP. There are some surprises for the conventional wisdom. The case for creating more jobs by government spending was rated within a hair’s breadth of reducing the deficit (37 percent to 39 percent) and opinion was evenly divided (33 to 33) on whether the stimulus had hurt or helped the economy. Voters registered their disapproval of Democratic control of Congress and of what the White House promised but failed to deliver. It is apparent that Obama didn’t seem to have understood the problems of the average American.

…Today the polls indicate that the president has reached a point where a majority of Americans have no confidence, or just some, that he will make the right decisions for the country. There isn’t a single critical problem on which the president has a positive rating. It didn’t help when he kept on and on asserting that he had inherited a terrible situation from the Bush administration. Yes, enough, and sir, the country elected you to solve problems, not to complain about them.

…The public disillusionment has now hardened. In a Quinnipiac poll this summer, only 28 percent of white voters said they would back Obama for a second term if the election were held then. Still, those results do not mean the public will go Republican next time. It depends on the candidate and the party. A centrist Democrat could win again—someone like retiring Sen. Evan Bayh, who sets a better course for the party in a New York Times op-ed. “A good place to start would be tax reform. Get rates down to make American businesses globally competitive,” he writes. “Simplify the code to reduce compliance costs and broaden the base. . . . Ban earmarks until the budget is balanced [and] support a freeze on federal hiring and pay increases.”…

Jennifer Rubin comments on the Ego in Chief.

…Bill Clinton, when he was in office, was considered by his critics (and some of his admirers) to be among the most self-indulgent presidents in memory. His dalliance with an intern nearly brought down his presidency. He was in all respects — from food to incessant lateness to a phony tear at Ron Brown’s funeral –undisciplined and self-absorbed. But he can’t hold a candle to Obama.

Clinton at least understood the basic equation in politics: the elected pol demonstrates concern for the citizenry (”I feel your pain”) and in return gets the cheers and support of the voters. Obama feels his own pain. Or as he said yesterday about the Democratic losses, “I feel bad.” Excuse me, but why do we care? He has just — to pick up on his favorite car metaphor — wrecked the family vehicle. I don’t think that deserves our empathy. It didn’t just happen to him; he is the source of the political catastrophe that has descended upon the Democratic Party.

Obama, at minor and major points in his career, has made it all about himself. The cult of personality dominated his campaign. He turned on Rev. Wright when Wright questioned Obama’s sincerity. He based his foreign policy on the egocentric notion that his mere presence would change historic, substantive disputes between the parties (i.e., Israel wants peace and the Palestinians want no Israel) and transform a radical Islamic regime. He became offended when Daniel Ortega brought up America’s role in the Bay of the Pigs. (Obama declared he had an alibi — he was a child.) He has painted critics as enemies and refused to recognize the legitimate grievances of the electorate and his own party. The loss is a function of the voters’ ignorance and misperceptions; the solution is more Obama in the heartland. You see the pattern. …

 Jonah Goldberg also dishes up well-deserved criticism of the president.

…In a press conference that was humble in tone but myopic in substance, Obama reiterated again and again that he got all of the policies right and the American people who disagreed hadn’t studied the issues closely enough. It only “felt” like the government was getting too “intrusive,” Obama explained. Voters had misunderstood the nature of his purely “emergency” measures.

For all of the talk about how Obama has learned from the election, it’s worth remembering this was exactly the same position he held before the election, just in nicer form.

And as it was before the election, Obama’s self-exonerating narrative is simply wrong. His agenda was never back-burnered for emergency measures. If anything, emergency measures were back-burnered for his agenda. In the summer of 2009, he pushed health-care reform while his aides swore he’d eventually get around to “pivoting” to jobs. Government spending seemed to go up and get more intrusive because it did go up and did get more intrusive. Government spending went up 23 percent in two years.

And how was intrusive health-care reform an “emergency measure” to grapple with the financial crisis? It’s not slated to go fully into effect until 2014. …

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Mark Steyn has an excellent article on the bureaucratic tyranny that we live under and have yet to overthrow.

As I said last year, the short history of the post-war western democracies is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life…

…Thus, America in the 21st century – a supposedly “center-right” nation governed by a left-of-center political class, a lefter-of-center judiciary, and a leftest-of-center bureaucracy.

Liberalism, as the political scientist Theodore Lowi wrote, “is hostile to law”, and has a preference for “policy without law”. The law itself doesn’t really matter so much as the process it sets in motion – or, as Nancy Pelosi famously put it, “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.” When Lowi was writing in the Seventies, he noted that both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission were set up by a Congress that didn’t identify a single policy goal for these agencies and “provided no standards whatsoever” for their conduct. So they made it up as they went along.

Where do you go to vote out the CPSC? Or OSHA? Or the EPA? …

This is the reality of small business in America today. You don’t make the rules, you don’t vote for people who make the rules. But you have to work harder, pay more taxes, buy more permits, fill in more paperwork, contribute to the growth of an ever less favorable business environment and prostrate yourself before the Commissar of Community Services – all for the privilege of taking home less and less money. … 

Fred Barnes thinks that the mood of the country will make Democrat Senators more willing to consider the Republican agenda.

…Ten Democrats whose seats are up in 2012 come from right-leaning states or saw their states scoot to the right this week: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jim Webb of Virginia, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Jon Tester of Montana, and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.

It’s a good bet that some or all of them will be sympathetic to cutting spending, extending the Bush tax cuts, scaling back ObamaCare, and supporting other parts of the Republican agenda. With Democratic allies, Republicans will have operational control of the Senate more often than Majority Leader Harry Reid and Mr. Obama will.

…The biggest problem for Democrats is the new wedge issue—spending, the deficit and debt. It divides them, and Tuesday’s losses only deepen the divides. Mr. Obama indicated at his press conference on Wednesday that he wants to preserve practically everything he’s done in the past two years, including the spending. A bloc of Democrats disagrees. …

Jennifer Rubin agrees with Fred Barnes and adds these thoughts.

…And let’s not forget Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who ran and won by repudiating Obama’s agenda. You may be skeptical that self-styled moderate Democrats will buck the president. Certainly, their track record in that regard is poor. But the 2010 midterm elections and these lawmakers’ own re-election have a way of focusing Democrats on the perils of Obamaism. And to give you a sense of the danger these Democrats face, Ohio, Nebraska, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, and New Mexico will all have Republican governors — and, if those officials do their jobs properly, a taste of what a conservative reform agenda looks like.

Will the Democrats at risk in 2012 desert Obama all the time? Of course not. But in key areas, it certainly will appear that there is a bipartisan consensus on one side and the president on the other. With Harry Reid — he of gaffes and never a sunny disposition — leading the Senate Democrats, this could become quite entertaining and, for the electorate, illuminating.

Jennifer Rubin has more on the Senate.

As I noted yesterday, the new Senate will have more Republicans and, just as important, many more nervous Democrats. Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is thinking along the same lines:

“I think the most interesting thing to watch in the next Congress is how many Democrats start voting with us,” McConnell said.

“Every one of the 23 Democrats up [for re-election] in the next cycle has a clear understanding of what happened Tuesday,” he said. “I think we have major opportunities for bipartisan coalitions to support what we want to do.”

…Senator-elect Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has to run again in two years for a full term, has already promised to take aim at Democratic policies — literally.” You can add in Kent Conrad. And Jim Webb.

And finally, you have the Blue State senators whose states aren’t all that Blue anymore. “Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin will say goodbye to Badger State delegation colleague Russ Feingold; Pennsylvania’s Sen. Bob Casey and Florida’s Bill Nelson will be joined on the Hill in January by conservative Republicans instead of by fellow Dems; and Sen. Sherrod Brown witnessed the Democrat in Ohio’s Senate contest beaten by almost 20 points.” In short, they risk being shown up by their states’ more-conservative senators. …

 And we have to thank Jennifer Rubin for some delightful news, if it is true.

Republicans will be rubbing their hands with glee if this turns out to be for real:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is gathering input from colleagues as she weighs whether to stay in Democratic leadership and run for minority leader after losing control of the House Tuesday night, according two senior Democratic aides and one lawmaker. … For members of her inner circle, the calls suggest that she may not be ready “to turn the keys over” while she’s gauging the more general feelings of Democrats outside her tightest clutch of backers, according to one of the aides.

Can you imagine? The voters deliver a historic thumping, toss out more than 60 Democrats, and the survivors — in a demonstration of how clearly they understood the voters’ message — put Pelosi in charge of their caucus. Oh, and she is the most vilified Democrat on the scene, and perhaps the figure who appeared most frequently in campaign ads — for the other party.

True, her caucus is now far more liberal — smaller, but more liberal. These are the Dems from the most solidly Blue districts whom no Republican, even in a historic sweep year, could unseat. But even they must have more common sense than to install the pol who became a poster girl for the Obama backlash. Right? I mean that would be like passing  a monstrous health-care bill the public doesn’t want while ignoring record unemployment. Oh. Yes. Don’t count Nancy out quite yet.

John Podhoretz comments on the somber mood of the GOP. Podhoretz notes that Republicans cannot override the president’s veto. But if the House votes to repeal Obamacare, and votes to continue the Bush tax cuts, whoever blocks these measures from becoming laws will rightfully feel the voters’ scorn in 2012.

…Nobody cares what the GOP might want to enact. Instead, the voters want the GOP to oppose, block and prevent.

They want the GOP to oppose any further expansion of government, and block any new programs the president and his party might want. A major corollary to this is a general desire to see the size of government reduced, though how this is to be accomplished no one actually knows.

They want the GOP to block tax increases, which presents the party with an enormous challenge given the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will happen automatically on Dec. 31.

And they want the GOP to prevent the imposition of ObamaCare, which will only be fully implemented starting in 2013. …

Charles Krauthammer has an interesting take on the elections. He thinks that the Obama agenda is dead, but that would require rational thought on the part of Liberals who think they know better than everyone else.

…the massive Republican swing of 2010 was a reaction to another rather unprecedented development – a ruling party spectacularly misjudging its mandate and taking an unwilling country through a two-year experiment in hyper-liberalism.

…Tuesday was the electorate’s first opportunity to render a national verdict on this manner of governance. The rejection was stunning. As a result, President Obama’s agenda is dead. And not just now. No future Democratic president will try to revive it – and if he does, no Congress will follow him, in view of the carnage visited upon Democrats on Tuesday.

This is not, however, a rejection of Democrats as a party. The center-left party as represented by Bill Clinton remains competitive in every cycle. (Which is why he was the most popular, sought-after Democrat in the current cycle.) The lesson of Tuesday is that the American game is played between the 40-yard lines. So long as Democrats don’t repeat Obama’s drive for the red zone, Democrats will cyclically prevail, just as Republicans do.

Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people’s proxy in saying no to Obama’s overreaching liberalism. As one wag put it, this wasn’t an election so much as a restraining order.

The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant. …

In City Journal, Fred Siegel asks whether the rest of the country is going to bail out the Ponzi scheme states.

…But another division is likely to compete for center stage in the next two years: the split between, on one side, California and New York—two states, deeply in debt, whose wealthy are beneficiaries of the global economy—and, on the other, the solvent states of the American interior that will be asked to bail them out. This geographic division will also pit the heartland’s middle class and working class against the well-to-do of New York and California and their political allies in the public-sector unions.

…Californians rejected an ill-drafted proposal to legalize marijuana, but they also adopted two resolutions sure to send their state deeper into the economic swamp. Proposition 23 would have suspended the state’s draconian environmental laws until unemployment, currently at 12.5 percent, comes down to 5 percent. It was defeated, 61 percent to 39 percent. Proposition 25, drafted by one of the state’s premier pressure groups, the California Federation of Teachers, sought to allow the legislature to pass a budget with simple majorities instead of the current two-thirds supermajority, which requires a degree of GOP support. Naturally, it passed. In New York, where the latest budget estimates suggest a $9 billion shortfall (up from an earlier estimate of $8.2 billion) for the fiscal year beginning next April, most of the state’s incumbents were unaffected by the national trend.

The mood in much of the rest of the country was quite different. In the nation’s interior, Republicans gained ten governorships and may have picked up as many as 20 state legislatures. In traditionally blue Minnesota and Wisconsin, both houses of the legislature are now in Republican control. This sets up what could be an ugly fight in which a Tea Party–inflected national Republican Party, encouraged by its strength in the interior states, forces California and New York—now heavily dependent on federal subsidies—to reduce their spending sharply. The coastal giants would no doubt respond by threatening defaults, which could affect the credit standing of the entire country, since many of the bonds are held by foreign investors. …

 Tunku Varadarajan gives a list of his first impressions on the elections.

…4. Marco Rubio will go far. Gracious in victory, he was elegantly non-hubristic in his evaluation of the Republican gains in this election. Don’t discount him as a running-mate for the Republican presidential nominee in 2012: after all, how priceless for the GOP is an electable, “post-racial” Hispanic? More likely, he will be honing his skills for 2016.

5. California and New York are, truly, at odds with the rest of America. Their economies are so large that their politics has been captured in an iron grip by the unions. At least California has a semblance of two-party politics; New York, by contrast, is quite Third World in its asphyxiating, uniparty dominance (a dominance that was abetted, this time, by the most embarrassing Republican candidate in the history of the state).

6. Thank God for Rob Portman: His election ensures that a robustly intellectual free-trader will have a seat in the Senate, all the better to combat the likely Democratic protectionism that awaits us in the run-up to 2012. (I’m delighted to report that Pat “Club for Growth” Toomey will be there, too, to support him.) …

George Will writes about Liberals.

…George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux agreed that interest-group liberalism has indeed been leavened by idea-driven liberalism. Which is the problem.

“These ideas,” Boudreaux says, “are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives. These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else’s contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments.” Liberalism’s ideas are “about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of ‘Big Ideas’ that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced by government, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people.”

This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power – are government commands and controls – superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society’s spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said “yes.”

Newsbiscuit has some fun.

In a ‘big society’-style drive to eliminate unnecessary public spending on the security services, passengers flying out of UK airports are to be encouraged to perform security checks on themselves, instead of requiring the assistance of expensive airport police.

Members of the public will be expected to pat themselves down, peer inside their own shoes and use a mirror to check if they are looking shifty, before going through a doorway and saying ‘bleep’ loudly if they are carrying any metal items. The move is expected to save millions of pounds a year, and hopes are high that airline passengers will be kept safe from all but the most dishonest hardline terrorists. …

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David Harsanyi strikes the right tone.

… No matter what happens, for now, we can look forward to two glorious years of hyper-partisan acrimonious gridlock: Washington’s most moral and productive state.

Jennifer Rubin recaps what has been finalized so far.

What happened? First the body count. The GOP picked up 64, lost three, and has a net pickup so far of 61. However, about a dozen seats are still undecided. The final total is likely to be in the high 60s. In the Senate, the GOP has six pickups, no losses. Lisa Murkowski seems headed for the win to hold Alaska for the GOP. (Those wily insiders in the Senate were perhaps wise not to dump her from her committees; she will caucus with the GOP.) Ken Buck is deadlocked in Colorado, with Denver all counted. Patty Murray is leading by fewer than 15,000 votes, but much of King County, a Democratic stronghold, is only 55 percent counted. The GOP will have six to seven pickups. In the gubernatorial races, the GOP nearly ran the table. So far, it has picked up seven and lost two (in California and Hawaii), is leading Florida by about 50,000 votes and in Oregon by 2 percent, and is trailing narrowly in Illinois and Minnesota.

Did Obama help anyone? Probably not. He fundraised for Barbara Boxer, but the race turned out to be not close. California seems determined to pursue liberal statism to its logical conclusion (bankruptcy). He made multiple visits to Ohio, and Democrats lost the Senate, the governorship, and five House seats. He went to Wisconsin. Russ Feingold lost, as did Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett and two House Democrats. A slew of moderate Democrats who walked the plank for him and his agenda also lost. Those House and Senate candidates who managed to avoid the tsunami – Joe Manchin, for example — will be extremely wary of following Obama if the president continues on his leftist jaunt. …

Tony Blankley believes that Obama will continue to push his agenda through overregulation and executive fiat.

…Meanwhile, it seems to me quite likely that the president will have no intention of giving up his larger agenda just because he can’t get it through the House. He came to office to do large things – no small ball for him – and I anticipate that he will use the executive and regulatory process to the maximum extent that the law permits to enact his energy and environmental policies.

This is likely to force the GOP House to use the only blocking device available to it: refusal to appropriate money for such executive projects. Whether the GOP likes it or not, it may have its hand forced. We may well see a season of government shutdowns. And once that gets going, it may well be used to try to block various parts of Obamacare as well. The Tea Partiers may not be denied easily. Nor should we be.

…The best chance for the GOP is to start proposing in the budget resolution real, honest, non-tax-increase-based solutions to the excessive costs of entitlements. No gimmicks. No budget ruses. No stupid policy tricks. Just honestly dealing with that central threat to our economic future may vouchsafe the public’s trust in a reborn GOP. Let the Senate or the president reject it if they wish.

Either way, it is going to be a rough political season. The only good coin of the realm for politicians will be honest, courageous policy thrusts. Let the chips fall where they may.

Craig Pirrong of Streetwise Professor counsels a GOP waiting game. … it is necessary for the Republicans to play a longer game, to lay the groundwork now for a strategy that has a chance for success in 2012.

In their cleverness, Pelosi and Obama and Reid et al actually gave the Republicans an opportunity to do that.  They quite deliberately pushed implementation of all of the major elements of Obamacare to 2013.  (Quite revealing, that; if they really thought it was going to be more popular than sex once people “saw what is in it,” why the delay?)  Which means that everything rides on 2012; Obamacare is not truly a fait accompli until later, and hence can conceivably be undone if Obama is out of the White House, and the Senate is more Republican, after the 2012 election.

Hence,  the strategy for repeal should be focused on influencing the 2012 election. …

Two years ago Craig foresaw, not only this election result, but the intransigent push by Obama and the other statists for programs that would anger this center-right country. You can read his 2008 post here.

The WSJ editors sum up the elections.

A Congressional majority is a terrible thing to waste, as Rahm Emanuel might say, and yesterday the public took that lesson to heart. Americans erased a Democratic House majority and a huge swath of the “moderates” who Mr. Emanuel had personally recruited to build their majorities in 2006 and 2008 before he became White House chief of staff. They were ousted from power after a mere two terms for having pursued an agenda they didn’t advertise and that voters didn’t want.

…In the exit polls, 48%—nearly half of all voters—said Congress should repeal ObamaCare. They voted for Republicans by nearly 9 to 1. On the stimulus, a third of the electorate said it “hurt the economy” while another third said it “made no difference.” As for a referendum on the role of government, no less than 56% of voters said government is doing “too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” …

…So much for President Obama’s attempts to become Reagan in reverse by rehabilitating government in the eyes of the public. One of the great ironies of the last two years is that the Administration that has expanded government more than any since LBJ has left the reputation of government in shambles. By constraining government to its more legitimate role, by contrast, Reagan left office after eight years with the reputation of Washington enhanced. …

Ed Morrissey gives his list of best and worst election performances.

Just a few personal leftover musings from a historic night ….

First off, I always have fun on Election Night, regardless of outcome, because it always reminds me of how blessed we are to have a stable electoral system that (nearly) always reflects the will of the electorate.  No one who sat through the 2006 and 2008 campaigns could seriously doubt that the electorate intended to deliver a spanking to the GOP and succeeded in doing so. The same holds for last night, in the reverse.

…That doesn’t mean it was a perfect night, though.  We had some disappointments along with some pleasant surprises in what was a banner night for Republicans nationwide.  Here are my nominations for the best — and worst — of the 2010 Wave. …

John Fund has an exciting piece on winning ballot initiatives that will stop gerrymandering in two states.

…Gerrymandering is the system that draws bizarre and serpentine districts in order to pack members of an opposing political party into as few districts as possible while leaving the rest to be dominated by the party drawing the lines. It entrenches incumbents by allowing them to pick their voters, rather than having voters pick their representatives.

On those terms, California’s Democratic gerrymander after the 2000 Census was a spectacular success. Only five of the state’s 692 legislative and Congressional elections held in the years since have had a switch in party control — a turnover of 0.7%.

Two years ago, California voters narrowly passed Proposition 11, taking the power to draw districts away from the legislature and vesting it with a 14-member citizen commission. However, the initiative stopped short of vesting Congressional redistricting authority in the citizen commission because proponents feared a backlash from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the state’s Democratic Congressional delegation.

Yesterday, California voters overwhelmingly voted to extend the reach of the citizen commission to include the drawing of Congressional district lines. In addition, a rival ballot initiative, supported by Speaker Pelosi and her allies, which would simply abolish the commission and return all redistricting power to the legislature failed spectacularly. …

President Obama will not like the global perspective on the elections that Nile Gardiner gives, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK.

…The overwhelming repudiation of the Obama administration’s failing policies sends a clear message to the world that the American people will not accept the decline of the world’s most powerful nation. Now the hard part begins, and a very top priority for the new Congress must be reigning in the ballooning national debt, which the Congressional Budget Office predicts could rise to 87 percent of GDP by 2020, 109 percent by 2025, and 185 percent of GDP by 2035.

While the Conservative-led government in Great Britain has already embarked upon a $130 billion austerity cuts package, shedding nearly 500,000 public sector jobs, the US administration has defiantly remained with its head in the sand, while still talking in terms of further stimulus spending. That position is unsustainable. Dramatic spending cuts (with the exception of national defence) must also be coupled with a pro-growth agenda of lower taxes, private sector job creation, free trade and economic freedom.

After the immense damage of the last two years, the midterms have offered the United States an opportunity to reverse course and get back on its feet. The world needs a powerful, successful, dynamic and prosperous America, where individual liberty and freedom are the driving forces, rather than the overbearing deadweight of federal government. The American people have spoken, and the White House must be held to account.

Toby Harnden has a great take on the Senate results, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK.

…Senator Harry Reid clung on in Nevada but, curiously, that might be a good result for Republicans. If he remains Senate Majority Leader, he’s a symbol of what so many Americans despise and have repudiated. If not, there might be an ugly battle among Democrats to replace him. Either way, the Democratic majority is too small to achieve anything in the Senate. Sharron Angle was a weird and extreme candidate. Better for Republicans that she sinks into obscurity rather than becoming a symbol of GOP eccentricity from 2010.

…The political map of the United States is now deep red. Certainly, that does not mean an endorsement of the Republican party. They’re very much on probation. We’ve had “change” elections in 2006, 2008 and 2010 – Republican bums could well be thrown out in 2012. …

Also in the Telegraph, UK, Janet Daley gives a clear portrayal of the dynamics behind the Tea Party.

More than three centuries ago, the residents of America staged a rebellion against an oppressive ruler who taxed them unjustly, ignored their discontents and treated their longing for freedom with contempt. They are about to revisit that tradition this week, when their anger and exasperation sweep through Congress like avenging angels. This time the hated oppressor isn’t a foreign colonial government, but their own professional political class. …

…It was widely known in Europe that the American Left hated George Bush (and even more, Dick Cheney) because of his military adventurism. What was less understood was that the Right disliked him almost as much for selling the pass over government spending, bailing out the banks, and failing to keep faith with the fundamental Republican principle of containing the power of central government.

So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats. And this is what the Tea Parties (which should always be referred to in the plural, because they are not a monolithic movement) are all about: they are not just a reaction against a Left-liberal president but a repudiation of the official Opposition as well. …

…As some astute commentators have observed, the ascendancy of the Tea Parties has meant that fiscal conservatism can replace social conservatism as the raison d’être of the Republican cause. So rather than being a threat to Republicanism, the election of Tea Party candidates might be its salvation. It represents a rank-and-file rejection of what many Americans see as a conspiracy of the governing elite against ordinary working people. All of which makes clearer the appeal of even the naivety and inexperience of some of the Tea Party contenders who have challenged incumbent Republican candidates. If what you are rebelling against is a generation of smug, out-of-touch professional politicians, then a little dose of amateurishness or innocence might strike you as positively refreshing. (In a poll last week, more than 50 per cent of voters said that they would be more willing this year than usual to vote for someone with little political experience.) …

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Toby Harnden leads with the top ten reasons why Dems lost big.

8. It’s the racism, stupid.

NAACP:

It is the notion that President Barack Obama is not a real natural born American, that he is some other kind of person, that abounds in Tea Party ranks and draws this movement into a pit of no return.

Barack Obama:

And then there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president.

9. It’s the media’s fault (especially Fox), stupid.

John Kerry

Television seems to exclusively gravitate toward the conflict and whatever is bad, rather than really focusing on the kinds of things that are good and make a difference.

Jimmy Carter

I think under the circumstances that I just described, he’s done an extraordinary job,” Carter said. “He’s got some good things done. They’ve been totally twisted around by some of the irresponsible news media to project him as a person that he’s not and as we all know.

Christopher Hitchens comments on presidential politicking and also the use of polls.

Future chroniclers of the low, dishonest, vacuous campaign of 2010—not only not a single funny placard at the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally but not a single serious one, either, plus the clapped-out crooner and fatwa groupie Yusuf Islam impersonating a potted plant—will certainly puzzle over President Barack Obama’s almost weird refusal to stick up for himself in the middle of his first term. Faced with an extraordinary campaign of defamation on everything from his citizenship to his religion to his paternity (a campaign that was not confined to the “fringe” but that drew both surreptitious and overt support from Republicans as senior as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich), Obama at times looked almost masochistic in his unreadiness to seize the initiative and give the lie to his detractors. Having many reservations of my own about the president, I would nonetheless have relished the chance to support him in such an effort, as would many of my friends. But one can’t indefinitely do for somebody what he is reluctant to do for himself. And, of course, Obama’s reticence managed somehow to confirm the image of him as a glacial elitist—a man who would hardly deign to pass comment on the rubes and proles.

Making it even worse, however, were the closing weeks of October when the president actually did decide to get in the ring and mix it up a little. First came the rather clumsy attempt to suggest that political money—or, at any rate, Republican political money—was somehow “foreign” in origin. Doesn’t Obama realize that rhetoric like this opens a wider auction—of chauvinist innuendo and fear-mongering over countries like China—which is always going to be won by the isolationists? (It also makes it easy for Republicans to recall truly scandalous launderings of overseas cash, from the Riady group to Roger Tamraz, which are indelibly associated with the same Bill Clinton who was this year’s surrogate tough-guy campaigner for the Democrats.)

Much worse, though, was the president’s remark last week, made on a Univision radio show, in which he expressed disappointment with Spanish-speaking voters who proposed to “sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.’ “…

Jeff Jacoby points out the unions were the big spenders in the election.

WHAT SPECIAL interest is spending the most money to influence the 2010 election? …

…the biggest outside spender is the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which is pumping almost $88 million into TV commercials, phone banks, and mailings to promote Democratic candidates.

…Every dollar the government pays its employees is a dollar the government taxes away from somebody else. As it is, public employees generally make more in salary and benefits than employees in the private economy: For Americans working in state and local government jobs, total compensation last year averaged $39.66 per hour — 45 percent more than the private sector average of $27.42. (For federal employees, the advantage is even greater.) Which means that AFSCME and the other public-sector unions are using $172 million that came from taxpayers to elect politicians who will take even more money from taxpayers, in order to further expand the public sector, multiply the number of government employees, and increase their pay and perks.

Campaign contributions from public-sector unions, National Review editor Rich Lowry writes, drive “a perpetual feedback loop of large-scale patronage.’’ Not only don’t the unions deny it, they trumpet it. “We’re the big dog,’’ brags Larry Scanlon, AFSCME’s political director. “The more members coming in, the more dues coming in, the more money we have for politics.’’

…The cost of government has soared in tandem with the growth in public-sector unions — and those unions make no bones about their reliance on politics to enlarge their wealth and power. “We elect our bosses, so we’ve got to elect politicians who support us and hold those politicians accountable,’’ AFSCME’s website proclaims. “Our jobs, wages, and working conditions are directly linked to politics.’’ That is exactly the problem. …

In the WSJ, Matthew Kaminski interviews another Republican rising star, Florida’s newly elected Senator Marco Rubio. The Dems prayed for Rubio’s defeat and tried various strategies to derail him since a high visibility GOP Hispanic is feared by them. Witness their disgusting filibuster of Miguel Estrada early in W’s administration.

…Something else accounts for Mr. Rubio’s rise from a blip in polls against the popular governor in his party, to the runaway favorite tomorrow. He appealed as a different sort of Republican. He kept his pitch upbeat, shunned personal attacks, worked hard to widen support without apologizing for his conservatism, and more noticeably than anyone in this race ran on an unabashed and constantly invoked faith in American exceptionalism.

…His response stayed in campaign character. He didn’t call out any of the antagonists by name and repeated everywhere that “this story” showed what’s wrong with insider Washington politics. His rallies are largely free of common GOP swipes at Obama, Pelosi and Reid. It’s mostly earnest talk of governing philosophies and America’s virtues. …

…”The only privilege that I was born with was to be a citizen of the greatest nation in human history,” he tells a breakfast crowd of supporters at the Original Pancake House in Palm Beach Gardens. “What makes America great is that anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.” The Obama agenda puts this unique inheritance in jeopardy, he says. Yet he keeps it all upbeat, inclusive, and to many people who see him in person, Reagan-esque. …

Jennifer Rubin tells the Republicans it’s time to earn the votes they received.

…Rather than make predictions (OK, if you insist – 74 in the House and nine in the Senate), I thought some suggestions  for the winners and losers might be in order. For the White House, which may be the biggest loser of them all, this is the time to shift tone and act presidential. Some sincere reflection and admission of their failure to address the voters’ concerns (about debt, bailouts, spending) would signal some much-needed maturity.

For the new GOP House leadership and the expanded GOP Senate caucus, modesty and circumspection is in order. No matter how big the victory, the voters’ message is not that they have “permanently” shifted to the GOP or that the GOP has proved itself as the party of good governance. Shifts are never permanent, and the governance skills have yet to be demonstrated. And whether the new leadership suspects that Obama’s presidency is kaput or not, it is unseemly and unwise to celebrate the demise of a presidency after only two years. (If David Brooks’s sampling of GOP officials is accurate, there is hope in this regard. He observes, “This year, the Republicans seem modest and cautious. I haven’t seen this many sober Republicans since America lost the Ryder Cup.”) …

In Forbes, Paul Johnson has an interesting article on Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Great Britain.

Whom would you call the world’s best salesman? At present I would nominate Pope Benedict XVI.

In September the Pope carried out a four-day state visit to Britain, which was the most successful event of its kind that I can remember. Yet it began under the very worst auspices. There were complaints the visit was unnecessary and wasteful. Both taxpayers and Catholics were made to fork out heavily for police protection. A combination of atheists and homosexual activists threatened disruption and embarrassing incidents. All the main events were for ticket-holders only, with many tickets still unsold on the eve of the Pontiff’s arrival. Much of the media showed itself to be cold, skeptical or downright hostile.

As it turned out, the visit struck and sustained a note of calm and genial triumph. The demonstrators were ignored–except by the Pope, who prayed for them. All the events were thronged, especially by young adults, who showed by their simple enthusiasm that religion is still a living excitement for them. The Pope had done his homework well, and each of his short discourses was exactly suited to the event and clearly hit home with his audiences. …

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In the Boston Globe, Joan Venocchi writes about NJ Governor Chris Christie’s increasing popularity. Hey, anyone hated by government unions has to be doing something right.

…Christie has what other politicians desperately seek: authenticity.

Watching him in action was a lesson in the power of charisma — and a reminder that it doesn’t always have to come in a package that looks like Senator Scott Brown or like the fit but ever-evolving Romney.

“He’s definitely a star on the GOP national stage,’’ said Republican consultant Todd Domke, of the New Jersey governor. “He’s no less appealing because he’s a big guy. In fact, it sort of goes with his everyman persona. He is not out bicycling with John Kerry and Scott Brown. He’s busy cutting the fat out of state government.’’

Fiscal conservatives adore Christie’s tough-guy attitude toward spending. He killed a Hudson River tunnel project to double commuter rail service because he said New Jersey can’t afford it. It’s the opposite of the Big Dig financing plan that Baker came up with on behalf of a Massachusetts Republican governor. Christie also doesn’t carry baggage like “Romneycare,’’ the derisive label opponents hang on the Massachusetts health care reform law that passed with Romney’s blessing. …

And WaPo also profiles New Jersey’s governor.

…Christie has grabbed the attention of some influential national Republicans who say his battles with New Jersey Democrats offer a model for taking on President Obama if they win control of one or both houses of Congress next week.

In Trenton, Christie has done what Republicans on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail are promising: to cut spending to reduce the budget deficit. And he has made the cuts in spite of Democrats’ criticism that he is destroying popular and important programs.

This year, when New Jersey Democrats proposed a tax surcharge on income above $1 million, the state faced a possible government shutdown if Christie did not relent.

…He added, “so what happened? They sent me that tax increase, I vetoed it, immediately, within the first 30 seconds they handed it to me, I handed it right back to them. And then they passed my budget.” …

Jennifer Rubin adds her comments and highlights a YouTube video of Christie.

Chris Christie’s latest YouTube hit demonstrates the qualities that are defining his public persona and causing many a conservative to wonder whether he is “the guy” to take on Obama. (He insists he isn’t, but the conservative buzz about him has only grown.) In this clip, Christie methodically reels off a list of nonsense bills on which the New Jersey legislature has spent time, all the while ignoring major issues like property-tax relief and pension reform. Yes, what he is saying is important, but it is the how he is saying it that makes him a rising star.

His background as a U.S. attorney certainly comes through: the use of vernacular, the good humor, the methodical pacing. If the GOP wants to deliver some tough medicine in the next few years — on entitlement reform, spending discipline, etc. — they’d better find an appealing messenger and a down-to-earth manner of delivering the message.

Christie may actually mean what he says and may refuse to run. But the other 2012 contenders should take note. If you want to win an election and a mandate, you will need more than a clipboard and PowerPoint presentation. Politics is serious stuff, but it is also about performance. And with the exception of Sarah Palin, there isn’t any Republican contender for 2012 in sight who looks like he is having fun out there. There’s more to politics than a telegenic personality, a good sense of humor, and a flair for the dramatic, but none of these qualities hurt. Republican voters should look for a suitably conservative message, but they will inevitably be swayed by the skill and appeal of the messenger himself.

Scott Rasmussen hits the nail on the head. Are Republicans listening? Because they’re not winning, the Dems are losing.

…But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.

This is the continuation of a trend that began nearly 20 years ago. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president and his party had control of Congress. Before he left office, his party lost control. Then, in 2000, George W. Bush came to power, and his party controlled Congress. But like Mr. Clinton before him, Mr. Bush saw his party lose control.

That’s never happened before in back-to-back administrations. The Obama administration appears poised to make it three in a row. This reflects a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. …

Roger Simon points to a problematic congressman, if the Republicans gain control of the House. We will see if they play the usual game.

…One of those is Fred Upton. Who is Fred?  Well, he is the Republican representative from Michigan’s 6th who has served in Congress since 1987.  More interestingly, he is in line to be chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (not the Ways & Means Committee, as Eleanor Clift assumed.)

No matter there.  Yet more interesting is Upton’s voting record, which might be of concern to Tea Party supporters.

…And it’s not just that he was on the wrong side of history (others were); he has been on the wrong side of the economy as well. Upton has voted “yes” on bailing out Wall Street and “yes” on almost all Obama-Pelosi spending, including the $409 billion Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, which gave Obama $19 billion more than he asked for and contained $7.7 billion in earmarks. He also voted “no” on tax cuts, being one of only three Republicans to oppose Bush tax cuts back in 2005.

But wait, as they say, there’s more. Much more — especially in areas that relate specifically to the critical House Energy and Commerce Committee. …

Tony Blankley looks at the differences between 1995 and the current political atmosphere.

…Either this is just the end of a big election that rolls back a few important mistakes, but basically changes little besides who gets the good parking spaces and whose staffers get to cash in for a few years. Or this is the beginning a great reformation that will take America back for liberty. It’s up to the people. We are so close. In 50 years in politics, I have never seen as large a percentage of the public self-motivated for reformation. For those of us who believe we are a providential country, now is the chance for the public to demonstrate it.

If the tea partiers and other liberty lovers continue to engage Washington next year, then government shutdowns can work, vetoes can be overridden and public opinion can be rallied to help defeat Obamacare, higher taxes and deficits. …

In the Economist – Democracy in America Blog, W.W. blogs on topics relating to last weeks Stewart/Colbert rally.

…One sees progressive managerial elitism most clearly in the left’s public-health and environmental paternalism. The rarely uttered idea is that the people who know best need to force the rest of us to do what’s good for us. Whatever you think of this sort of state paternalism, it isn’t liberal or liberty-enhancing in any non-tortured sense. The progressive technocrat’s attitude toward liberty is: “Trust us. You’re better off without so much of it.” The more the left is inclined to stick up for this sort of “activist government” as a progressive, humanitarian force, the less it is inclined to couch its arguments in terms of liberty. And that’s just honest. More honest, I would add, than social conservatives who in one breath praise liberty and in the next demand the state imposition of their favourite flavour of morality. …

Robert Samuelson explains, using facts and science, why high-speed trains won’t help the environment. They would give politicians another opportunity to spend more money in a wasteful manner, however.

Somehow, it has become fashionable to think that high-speed trains connecting major cities will help “save the planet.” They won’t. They’re a perfect example of wasteful spending masquerading as a respectable social cause. They would further burden already-overburdened governments and drain dollars from worthier programs—schools, defense, research.

Let’s suppose that the Obama administration gets its wish to build high-speed rail systems in 13 urban corridors. The administration has already committed $10.5 billion, and that’s just a token down payment. California wants about $19 billion for an 800-mile track from Anaheim to San Francisco. Constructing all 13 corridors could easily approach $200 billion. Most (or all) of that would have to come from government. What would we get for this huge investment?

Not much. Here’s what we wouldn’t get: any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse-gas emissions, air travel, or oil consumption and imports. Nada, zip. If you can do fourth-grade math, you can understand why. …

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This is our last post before the historic election of 2010 when the kid president gets spanked by the voters.

John Fund interviews a Dem congressman who has seen enough of Washington.

Pickerhead has been saving the next item since August. It is by Jonah Goldberg and perfectly illustrates of the weakness of Barack Obama – self love. In January, the president said 2010 midterm elections wouldn’t be like 1994 because this time, “you’ve got me.”

Somebody needs to start a blog named; “You’ve got me” or, how about “S**t my Prez Sez.”

Also here, Thomas Sowell, Michael Barone, Peggy Noonan and Toby Harnden.

And, great cartoons at the end.

Pickerhead’s prediction is for 70 house seats and 9 in the senate.

John Fund interviews retiring Washington Congressman Brian Baird, who gives a candid Democrat view of the legislation and the politics that he has seen in Congress these past two years.

It took Democrats in the House of Representatives 40 years to become out-of-touch enough to get thrown out of office in 1994. It took 12 years for the Republicans who replaced them to abandon their principles and be repudiated in 2006. Now it appears that the current Democratic majority has lost voter confidence in only four years.

How did this happen? And what does the increasing speed of voter backlash mean for Republicans who will likely take control next Tuesday?

For answers, I decided to chat up Rep. Brian Baird, a six-term Democrat from Washington state. Even though he’s never won re-election with less than 56% of the vote, Mr. Baird is retiring because the brutal congressional commute makes it impossible for him to see his twin five-year-old boys grow up. He’s not sticking around, like so many former members of Congress, to lobby inside the Beltway. That allows him to be candid about Congress and his party.

…Mr. Baird, 54, is a loyal Democrat who voted for all of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s legislative priorities, including the stimulus bill, cap and trade and ObamaCare. But he admits all three have serious flaws. …

… For some of the shortcomings of financial regulatory reform, Mr. Baird blames the disillusioning battle over ObamaCare. “When the House had to pass the Senate version of health care unchanged, some members asked why should they invest the mental effort in mastering the details” of financial reform. Mr. Baird found parts of the bill mind-numbing.

Although he voted for it, he says he was troubled that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the entities at the heart of the housing meltdown, weren’t addressed. They have clearly exercised undue influence on Capitol Hill, he notes. “When I was first elected I was puzzled why they were holding events in my honor as a mere freshman. I asked myself, why is a federal entity so involved in political activity?” … 

Pickerhead has been saving this article from Jonah Goldberg since August. It is a shorthand version of the weakness of Barack Obama – self love. In January, the president said 2010 midterm elections wouldn’t be like 1994 because this time, “you’ve got me.” Somebody needs to start a blog named; “You’ve got me” or, how about “S**t my Prez Sez.”

… At the beginning of the year, retiring seven-term representative Marion Berry (D., Ark.) recounted a conversation he had with the president. Obama’s unrelenting push for health-care reform in the face of public opposition reminded Berry of the Clinton-era missteps that led to the Republican rout of the Democrats in 1994. “I began to preach last January that we had already seen this movie and we didn’t want to see it again because we know how it comes out,” Berry told a newspaper.

Or, to quote Brody in Jaws 2: “But I’m telling you, and I’m telling everybody at this table, that that’s a shark! And I know what a shark looks like, because I’ve seen one up close. And you’d better do something about this one, because I don’t intend to go through that hell again!”

Convinced that his popularity was eternal, Obama responded by saying, yes, but there’s a “big difference” between 1994 and 2010, and that big difference is, “you’ve got me.”

The funny thing is, Obama might have been right. Because things might be much worse for Democrats in 2010 than they were in 1994 — and the big difference might well be Barack Obama. …

Thomas Sowell discusses how we are losing freedom by allowing government to rule us through the arbitrary power of regulations created by government bureaucrats, rather than elected legislators.

…Other actions and proposals by this administration likewise represent moves in the direction of arbitrary rule…

These include threats against people who simply choose to express opinions counter to administration policy, such as a warning to an insurance company that there would be “zero tolerance” for “misinformation” when the insurance company said that ObamaCare would create costs that force up premiums.

Zero tolerance for the right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution?

…Those who are constantly telling us that our economic problems are caused by not enough “regulation” never distinguish between regulation which simply enforces known rules, as contrasted with regulation that gives arbitrary powers to the government to force others to knuckle under to demands…

Michael Barone explains that Liberals have gotten history wrong as well.

…FDR’s expansion of government did not pull unemployment down below 10 per cent in the 1930s. If you look at polls towards the end of that decade, you see that most Americans felt government was spending too much, that uncertainty about levels of taxation and regulation was stopping entrepreneurs from creating jobs and that the unions had too much power. It is at least arguable that Roosevelt’s Democrats were heading for defeat in 1940. Such a defeat was avoided because by November 1940, the Second World War had broken out. Hitler and Stalin were allies, and with their confederates in Italy and Japan were in command of or threatening most of Europe and Asia, with Britain and its empire standing alone against them. In these dire circumstances, voters understandably picked the unflappable Roosevelt over his opponent, a utility executive with no experience of public office. …

…We are making history, the Obama Democrats proclaimed as they passed their health care bill, over the objections of a majority of the US electorate, expressed through polls and the unlikely medium of the voters of Massachusetts (who chose Republican Scott Brown for what had been Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in January this year). What they had in mind was the New Deal historians’ version of history. But that was not a fully accurate picture of the 1930s, and America today is a nation even less eager to have government “spread the wealth around”, as Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber in Toledo, Ohio, in October 2008. …

Peggy Noonan highlights a Tea Party candidate in one congressional race.

…We’ll know in the early hours next Wednesday how it all turned out. But here is one way you’ll know it’s huge: Anna Little wins in New Jersey. If she wins it means the Republican wave swept all before it.

Not that she’s expected to. She’s running for Congress in the Jersey Shore’s Sixth Congressional District, which went for Mr. Obama over Mr. McCain 60% to 38%. She’s the Republican mayor of Highlands, population 5,000 up against incumbent Frank Pallone, an 11-term Democratic veteran who won in 2008 by 35 points. …

…Ms. Little takes it in stride. She says she’s not looking at Obama’s numbers. “I’m looking at Chris Christie’s numbers.” The Republican governor carried the district by 8% last November.

…I talked to a Little supporter named Lois Pongo. The tea party and the Republican establishment are supposed to be at war, I said. No, she said, they’re working together. “We need to get into a place of cooperation. It can’t be we-they. The party has structure, knowledge, experience. The tea party has principles—not just the principles but the passion to restore our country.” …

Jonathan Karl, in ABC News, notes that when the going gets tough, the Dems get personal.

…As you watch this year’s ads — and I’ve been watching all too many lately — you’ll notice a striking difference between Democratic and Republican attack ads: Democrats are attacking over personal issues, Republicans are attacking over policy.

There are, of course, many exceptions, but the overall trend is clear. Democrats are hitting their Republican opponents over past legal transgressions, shady business deals and even speeding tickets. Republicans are hammering Democrats over “Obamacare,” Nancy Pelosi and the economy.

A recent study by the Wesleyan Media Project actually quantifies this. They looked at 900,000 airing of political ads this year and concluded: “Democrats are using personal attacks at much higher rates than Republicans and a much higher rate than Democrats in 2008.” …

Toby Harnden, from the Telegraph, UK is a good one to finish up the pre-election coverage.

… Swept into power on a wave of adulation and talk of an historic new era, Obama never felt he needed to work with Republicans. It took him 18 months before he invited Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, to the White House.

Rather than Obama picking up the phone, the meeting was brokered by Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, two former Senate Majority leaders who are now lobbyists. Boehner, like Obama, is an avid golfer but the President has never seen fit to ask the Republican leader in the House to join him on the links.

Having moved serenely through life being complimented on being the first and the best at everything, Obama felt that his transcendent presence and intellect would be enough.

Believing he would be a great president, Obama wanted to tackle what he saw as the grand issues, not the small-bore concerns of Americans struggling to make ends meet. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, he calculated, so deal-making was not necessary.

The problem was that his world view was that of a conventional liberal Democrat but he was president of a nation that was centre-right. His victory came from those who wanted him to change Washington, not America.

These days, it is not difficult to find Obama voters who are disillusioned.

“I voted for him and I believed in him but I’m beginning to feel that he’s overreached,” said Christopher Quail, an English-born former Dominican priest who has lived in New Orleans for 35 years. “Something’s gone wrong. He put his favourite projects ahead of the necessities. He tackled health care instead of the economy.”  …

More from Harnden.  

Here in Chicago, a couple of things about President Barack Obama’s final appeal to the voters has been striking. The first is that he’s even campaigning in his home neighbourhood of Hyde Park, a liberal, university enclave on the South Side of the Windy City.

Illinois is a deep blue state yet Democrats could well lose both the governorship and Obama’s old Senate seat – a major symbolic blow to his personal prestige. At one point he pleaded: “Chicago, I need you to keep on fighting!  I need you to keep on believing!” 

If Obama is having to defend home turf at this stage of the election campaign, what does that say about his party’s prospects? It’s as if George W. Bush found himself having to give a stump speech in Midland, Texas.

The second striking thing is the extent to which Obama’s pitch to voters is, well, all about him. Despite Tim Kaine, DNC chairman, insisting that Tuesday’s mid-terms are not a “referendum” on the president, Obama himself clearly thinks it is. …

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Charles Krauthammer says after getting spanked by the voters, the left will move their agenda by administrative fiat.

…Over the next two years, Republicans will not be able to pass anything of importance to them – such as repealing Obamacare – because of the presidential veto. And the Democrats will be too politically weakened to advance, let alone complete, Obama’s broad transformational agenda.

That would have to await victory in 2012. Every president gets two bites at the apple: the first 18 months when he is riding the good-will honeymoon, and a second shot in the first 18 months of a second term before lame-duckness sets in.

Over the next two years, the real action will be not in Congress but in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. Democrats will advance their agenda on Obamacare, financial reform and energy by means of administrative regulation, such as carbon-emission limits imposed unilaterally by the Environmental Protection Agency. …

Even the NYTimes must be stunned by their polling results. Jennifer Rubin fills us in.

…Other figures evidence the electorate’s rightward shift. Women, who have of late tilted Democratic, are now evenly split between support for Democrats and Republicans. By a margin of 55 to 36 percent, respondents favored smaller government with fewer services over bigger government with more services. Fifty-three percent think Obama does not have a clear plan for creating jobs. Respondents think Republicans are more likely than Democrats to create jobs and reduce the deficit (by a 43 to 32 percent margin).

And oh, by the way, the polling sample — 38 percent Democrat and 27 percent Republican — is more dramatically skewed toward the Democrats than just about any other poll (OK, there’s Newsweek, but not even James Carville takes that seriously).

Obama has managed to lose his own standing, take his party down with him, and convince core Democratic constituencies to vote Republican. And it took him only two years.

Nile Gardiner, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, posts on the latest Gallup poll.

…Gallup has another devastating poll which makes extremely grim reading for the White House today. Gallup’s polling shows that 48 percent of Americans now regard themselves as conservative, higher than each of the last three midterms, compared to just 20 percent who describe themselves as liberals. In addition, Gallup reveals that 55 percent of likely voters next week are Republican or lean Republican, in contrast to 40 percent who are Democrat or lean Democrat. …

…The poll underscores not only the huge advantage the Republicans have going into next week’s election, but also the sheer scale of the conservative revolution in America. As Gallup shows, conservatives now outnumber liberals by an almost 2.5 to 1 ratio. Liberals make up just 20 percent of the American population. Barack Obama is the most left-wing president in US history, and is clearly out of touch with at least 80 percent of the American people, who clearly do not share his ideology. Next Tuesday looks set to be an epic disaster for the Left in America, and the capsizing of the president’s Big Government dream.

More and more liberals have seen enough. In the WaPo, Dana Milbank discusses the president’s appearance on The Daily Show. More striking than Obama’s attitude was what the interview said about Jon Stewart and liberals like him.

…Stewart, who struggled to suppress a laugh as Obama defended Summers, turned out to be an able inquisitor on behalf of aggrieved liberals. …

…”Is the difficulty,” Stewart asked, “that you have here the distance between what you ran on and what you delivered? You ran with such, if I may, audacity…. yet legislatively it has felt timid at times.”

Stewart had found the sore point between Obama and his base — and Obama was irritable. “Jon, I love your show, but this is something where I have a profound disagreement with you,” he said. “What happens,” he added, “is it gets discounted because the presumption is, well, we didn’t get 100 percent of what we wanted, we got 90 percent of what we wanted — so let’s focus on the 10 percent we didn’t get.”…

Peter Wehner also comments on President Obama and Jon Stewart.

…Throughout the interview, Obama also found himself hoisted with his own petard. It is Obama who created, by his words and promises, almost Messianic expectations for himself and his presidency. He was going to do so much, so fast, so well. Those expectations have come crashing down around Obama. Stewart’s line of questing was consistent. “Is the difficulty you have here the distance between what you ran on and what you’ve delivered,” Stewart asked the president. Mr. Obama did not seem happy with Stewart’s impertinence. But, at least, out of the interview emerged a new motto from the Obama White House. It’s based on what the president himself said: “Yes We Can — but…” as in “I think what I would say is ‘yes we can, but it’s not going to happen overnight.’”

Most of us missed the qualifiers during the campaign. …

Peter Wehner unpacks Obama’s comments to the Latino community. Wehner draws attention to Obama’s stunning narcissism and lack of perspective, when Obama calls political opponents “enemies” because it’s personal and affects the president.

I had lunch yesterday with a long-time friend who is intelligent, well informed, and a life-long Democrat. In the course of our conversation I asked for his reaction to what the president said on Univision.

If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, “We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re going to reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,” if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder.

Given how out of sync the president’s words have been, compared with his high-minded campaign rhetoric, I asked my friend, “Help me to decode Obama.” I wanted to hear his perspective as someone who had invested great hopes in the president.

His response was arresting: “He’s ruthless.” My friend proceeded to tell me that Obama should be understood in the context of the Chicago Way.

…Obama’s rhetoric — using the word “enemy” to describe members of the opposition party — has become nearly unhinged. For Obama there are, it seems, no honest or honorable critics; they are all dishonest, dishonorable, operating in bad faith, and now, apparently, out-and-out enemies. Mr. Obama’s rhetoric is more scorching toward Republicans than it is toward Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il. …

Having seen enough of the unscripted president, Victor Davis Hanson suggests the prez get back on teleprompted message.

…But the problem with the first is that Obama does not do well when he’s impromptu and petulant: see “typical white person,” “spread the wealth,” “clingers,” and, more recently, “they talk about me like a dog,” his telling the Republicans that they have to sit in the back of the car, and warning “Latinos” to punish their conservative “enemies” by voting for the Obama slate. The result is that he appears either weird (at best) or Nixonian (at worst), given his now apparently insincere bring-us-together rhetoric. …

Toby Harnden, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, writes about Bill Clinton hitting the campaign trail. How does Bill Clinton diss Obama? Remember the Dem candidate for RI Governor? Bill’s campaigning for him.

…Some are speculating that Hillary might resign from State and mount a primary challenge to Obama in 2012. I think that’s highly unlikely – it would be an extremely difficult path for her to challenge the first black President. Seven years is a long, long time (and so is five, when the decision to run would be taken) but all things being equal she is currently a near cert to run in 2016.

Of course, it’s not impossible that Obama, badly damaged by the mid-terms and sick of the distinct lack of the adoration he’s always been used to, will do an LBJ and decide not to run in 2012. I’ve long wondered whether his heart is in getting re-elected. In mid-September, a “big-time Democrat” told Politico’s Roger Simon that 2010 was already lost:

“It is gone. He must now concentrate on saving 2012. But the biggest fear of some of those close to him is that he might not really want to go on in 2012, that he might not really care.”

In the event that Obama decides not to run for re-election, Hillary becomes the immediate Democratic front runner.

In the Economist Blogs – Democracy in America, A.E. posts an excellent snapshot on the power of government unions.

ON FRIDAY the Wall Street Journal provided a wonderful bit of irony: despite the howls of indignation from the Democrats over private campaign spending, it turns out that the biggest sugar daddy is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a public-sector labour union that spends almost all of its cash for the Democrats. AFSCME accounts for roughly 30% of spending from pro-Democratic groups. A piece from US News and World Report points out that, in total, “Big Labour” is spending more private cash than the Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads (Karl Rove’s outfit) combined.

Since the WSJ article most of the commentary has involved arguments over possible Democratic hypocrisy (pro, con), but that debate misses the point. The Democrats are electorally beholden to union support, and this often leads to bad policy.

In an essay in National Affairs previously flagged by Schumpeter, Daniel DiSalvo notes some of the negative consequences of this symbiotic relationship. He focuses on public-sector unions, which have grown while membership in their private-sector counterparts has flagged. … public-sector unions have a distinct advantage over private ones. “Through their extensive political activity,” says Mr DiSalvo, “these government-workers’ unions help elect the very politicians who will act as ‘management’ in their contract negotiations—in effect handpicking those who will sit across the bargaining table from them, in a way that workers in a private corporation (like, say, American Airlines or the Washington Post Company) cannot.” And the public-sector managers sitting across the table don’t have the same worries as private-sector bosses…

…Amid savage private-sector job cuts, one-third of the funds from the 2009 stimulus bill went to state and local governments, mainly to rescue public-sector employees. An executive order last spring strongly encouraged government agencies to use construction companies with unionised workforces for any federal construction project over $25m. That followed three other union-friendly orders. In his bail-out of Chrysler and GM unions won some special favours. And Mr Obama imposed tariffs on imports of Chinese tyres at a union’s request. …

Michael Barone also sounds off against government unions.

…The problem is that, as Roosevelt understood, public employee unions’ interests are directly the opposite of those of taxpayers. Public employee unions want government to be more expensive and government employees to be less accountable.

…Public employee union members have become, as U.S. News Editor in Chief Mortimer Zuckerman writes, “the new privileged class,” with better pay, more generous benefits and far more lush pensions than those who pay their salaries — and who are taxed to send money to their leaders’ favored candidates.

Franklin Roosevelt thought public-sector unions were a lousy idea. Do you?

Unfortunately, Sandra Day O’Connor isn’t finished making up the Constitution.

…”This is Sandra Day O’Connor calling about Ballot Question 1″ was the recorded message that greeted Nevada voters when they picked up the phone earlier this week. Justice O’Connor, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2006 but sits on lower federal courts from time to time, was pitching a Nov. 2 state initiative that would replace judicial elections with “merit selection.”

…The public campaign for merit selection has been led by O’Connor’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. But behind the scenes is liberal moneyman George Soros, who has provided $45 million in grants to groups like Justice at Stake and the left-wing People for the American Way that press for an end to judicial elections.

Think of it as an investment in judicial activism. Selection boards get captured by trial lawyers, academics and antibusiness activists. They nominate plaintiff-friendly judges and state legislatures rubber-stamp them. Rather than play to the voters, would-be judges play to the special interests that dominate the commissions. This campaigning takes place behind closed doors. One Missouri judge called the process “exclusive, secretive and political.”

In “merit” states the law takes a left turn toward jackpot justice. This has played out in Alaska and Wyoming, both states in which “merit” picks have struck down common-sense tort reforms. …

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David Harsanyi kicks off the day by telling the political class that they now have America’s attention.

…Tea Party types are interested in ideology not just economy. They will be disappointed at the first whiff of “bipartisanship” consensus on spending. They will be irate when Republicans fail to shut down unnecessary federal departments as promised.

(As others have pointed out, if the GOP doesn’t have the stomach to de-fund those nerds at NPR, how can we expect them to repeal Obamacare?)

Most elections aren’t as historically momentous as partisans would have us believe, but many can shift the trajectory of the national conversation for a long time.

Now that the Tea Party cleared the brush and lived to tell about it, the next round of candidates will be far less apprehensive in advocating free-market reforms. In fact, the next round of economically libertarian candidates — folks who had never thought of running against the establishment previously — are likely to be more polished, impressive and intellectually prepared to make their case.

…A new Rasmussen poll finds that 75 percent of likely voters believe a free market economy is better than an economy managed by the government. …

Jeff Jacoby thinks that expressing disdain for dense voters will not be a winning strategy for the Democrat party.

…The smug condescension in this — we’re losing because voters are panicky and confused — is matched only by its apparent cluelessness. Does Obama really believe that demeaning ordinary Americans is the way to improve his party’s fortunes? Or that his dwindling job approval is due to the public’s weak grip on “facts and science’’ and not, say, to his own divisive and doctrinaire performance as president?

…Obama is far from alone in looking down his nose at the great unwashed. Last month, Senator John Kerry explained that Democrats are facing such headwinds these days because voters are easily swayed dolts: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth.’’

…Heading into next week’s elections, Americans remain a center-right nation, with solid majorities believing that the federal government is too intrusive and powerful, that it does not spend taxpayer’s money wisely or fairly, and that Americans would be better off having a smaller government with fewer services. Nearly halfway through the most left-wing, high-spending, grow-the-government presidential term most voters can remember, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that so many of them are rebelling. The coming Republican wave is an entirely rational response to two years of Democratic arrogance and overreach. As the president and his party are about to learn, treating voters as stupid, malevolent, or confused is not a strategy for victory.

Toby Harnden, in the Telegraph, UK, says the electorate will get the last laugh.

…The most chortling of all about the populist Tea Party and its anti-tax, anti-government uprising against the Republican establishment can be found on the shows of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the edgy liberal satirists on Comedy Central. …

…Three days before the elections, Stewart will hold a “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington on the same day as Colbert, who adopts the character of a Right-wing talk show host, leads a “March to Keep Fear Alive”. The thinly-disguised message: Republicans are crazies who trade on fear. …

…The problem for Obama and the Democrats is that belittling the Tea Party movement, which is taking hold of much of Middle America, merely fuels the popular sense that the party in power is out of touch. It also highlights the reluctance of Obama and the Democrats to discuss the Wall Street bail-out, economic stimulus and health care bills because they know they are not vote winners. …

In the WaPo, Marc A. Thiessen has an interesting article on what might have been, but for Democrat arrogance. And it reminds us that we will have to watch the GOP. Anybody remember Trent Lott, Tom Delay and Ted Stevens?

The decline of the Obama presidency can be traced to a meeting at the White House just three days after the inauguration, when the new president gathered congressional leaders of both parties to discuss his proposed economic stimulus. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor gave President Obama a list of modest proposals for the bill. Obama said he would consider the GOP ideas, but told the assembled Republicans that “elections have consequences” and “I won.” Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, the president was not terribly interested in giving ground to his vanquished adversaries.

He may rue that decision next Tuesday. Whether the midterm elections are a tidal wave that sweeps Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill or simply result in major losses for the president’s party, one thing is clear: The stimulus will play a major role in determining the outcome. The legislation has not kept the unemployment rate below 8 percent, as the White House promised — but it has been an electoral boon to Republicans, and an albatross around the necks of many Democrats who voted for it. It might have been a different story had Obama handled the stimulus differently. In January 2009, Republicans were running scared — still reeling from the thumping they received in the past two elections, and afraid to so much as criticize the new Democratic president with stratospheric approval ratings. In these circumstances, the president could have easily co-opted the GOP by making it a partner in crafting the stimulus. He could have told Republicans: Take half of the money and use it for tax relief, spending, or both. Indeed, Republicans introduced several alternative stimulus bills that cost half as much as Obama’s (“twice the jobs at half the cost” was the GOP mantra). Had Obama really wanted to be the first “post-partisan” president, he could have incorporated one of these alternatives into his final stimulus legislation. …

…Would Republicans have accepted hundreds of billions in new government spending in exchange for including pro-growth tax relief and other GOP proposals? The offer would likely have split the party, with a significant number supporting the bill. The grass-roots movement for fiscal discipline had not yet been born, and many of the same Republicans who voted in favor of the “Bridge to Nowhere” would have gladly compromised with the popular new Democratic president. …

Also in the WaPo, Michael Gerson says Obama wins the prize for most arrogant presidential quote. Actually, humans, and are ancestors, are hard-wired to think quite well when scared. It’s why we’ve survived for millions of years. 

…”Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now,” he recently told a group of Democratic donors in Massachusetts, “and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.”

…Though there is plenty of competition, these are some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president.

…It is ironic that the great defender of “science” should be in the thrall of pseudoscience. Human beings under stress are not hard-wired for stupidity, which would be a distinct evolutionary disadvantage. The calculation of risk and a preference for proven practices are the conservative contributions to the survival of the species. Whatever neuroscience may explain about political behavior, it does not mean that the fears of massive debt and intrusive government are irrational.  …

…One response to social stress doesn’t help at all: telling people their fears result from primitive irrationality. Obama may think that many of his fellow citizens can’t reason. But they can still vote.

John Steele Gordon adds his thoughts on Obama’s condescension.

…Equally interesting, I think, is a front-page article in today’s New York Times, with its simply astonishing opening sentence: “It took President Obama 18 months to invite the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to the White House for a one-on-one chat.” Who was it who ran for president as a “post-partisan,” and who was going to bring a new way of doing things to Washington?

…The constitutional scholar in the White House might want to take a look at the Constitution’s preamble and refresh his memory as to who it was who ordained and established the government he heads. They’re going to be heard a week from tomorrow, and I don’t think President Obama is going to like what they have to say.

David Brooks dissects the liberal mindset.

…Over the past year, many Democrats have resolutely paid attention to those things that make them feel good, and they have carefully filtered out those negative things that make them feel sad.

For example, Democrats and their media enablers have paid lavish attention to Christine O’Donnell and Carl Paladino, even though these two Republican candidates have almost no chance of winning. That’s because it feels so delicious to feel superior to opponents you consider to be feeble-minded wackos.

On the other hand, Democrats and their enablers have paid no attention to Republicans like Rob Portman, Dan Coats, John Boozman and Roy Blunt, who are likely to actually get elected. It doesn’t feel good when your opponents are experienced people who simply have different points of view. …

Toby Harnden fills us in on the latest Obama gaffe.

To give credit where credit is due, President Barack Obama made something of a bipartisan gesture on Sunday night: he declined to endorse Frank Caprio, the Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island. This shock decision not to endorse the Democrat was effectively a thumbs up for Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican Senator.

…Now: Obama’s got the Democratic Governors’ Association on his back; he’s whipped up Rush Limbaugh into paroxysms of delight; he could well have lost his party a governor’s seat; and if he hasn’t lost his party the seat then he’s got a sworn enemy for the next four years in the form of Governor Caprio of Rhode Island (though after his outburst against the President in such a liberal state, I’d say that is a receding possibility). 

People often think of Obama as being a masterful campaigner and political strategist. …

Ed Koch thinks that the American electorate is planning another round of housecleaning in D.C.

…Why would intelligent voters leave the Democratic Party that they endorsed so heavily two years ago in the 2008 presidential election? The reason is obvious – deep, deep disappointment in the record of President Obama. The President has wasted many opportunities in his term to date, and has lost by his own admission almost every battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate in pushing through Congress monumental legislation that he signed into law.

…I believe, the coming November tsunami will roll across America and give the Republicans, who are undeserving of the honor, control of both Houses. The American public is enraged and wants to punish those who have been in charge of the country. They know those who will replace incumbents may be as bad or worse, but they also believe they can’t do any greater damage. They are willing to put up with them until the next election to teach our elected representatives a monumental lesson — that public service is an honorable profession and must be performed competently and honestly. …

Jennifer Rubin has recommended reading.

Michael Gerson conducts a must-read interview with Charlie Cook. In addition to predictions of a massive GOP wave, there is this discussion about Obama and the Democratic agenda:

…Some, Cook says, “are told all their lives that they are the most brilliant people on the planet. They don’t get less bright, but hubris kicks in. [Obama] just assumed that he was going to be a success, as he had always been in life.”

According to Cook, this reflects a lack of experience. “Experience is not an end, it is a means to an end: judgment.” Cook said that a few years in the Senate “don’t give an understanding of institutions and their dynamics. If [Obama] had been in the Senate six or eight years, he might have accumulated the wisdom to match the intelligence.”

…But there was more going on than simply picking the wrong agenda items or refusing to temper his own ego. Obama’s ideological rigidity and policy preferences ran headlong into Americans’ skepticism about big government and their sense of moral outrage. The Tea Party is a movement grounded in the belief in limited government. But it was also born out of a sense that we have lost track of fundamental values — thrift, discipline, and humility, for starters — and as a result are seeing irresponsible spending, massive debt, and liberal statism.

In Pajamas Media, Ed Driscoll comments on more obnoxious Obama-isms.

…President Barack Obama attacked Republicans with gusto Monday as he plunged into a final week of midterm election campaigning, but his party’s prognosis remained darkened by the feeble economy and his itinerary was designed largely to minimize losses. …

…He said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”

Rosa Parks could not be reached for comment.

The president does realize he’s elected to govern all of the voters, not just those who get their news from MSNBC, right? …

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Calling attention to his new book Don’t Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards, P. J. O’ Rourke makes a splash. He writes a strongly worded article that Democrats hate everything and everyone except power.

…Democrats hate Democrats most of all. Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats.

…Power, not politics, is what the Democrats love. Politics is merely a way to power’s heart. …And politics comes with that reliable boost for pathetic egos, a weapon: legal monopoly on force. If persuasion fails to win the day, coercion is always an option.

…Democrats hate success. Success could supply the funds for a power elopement. Fire up the Learjet. Flight plan: Grand Cayman. …

…Democrats hate America being a world power because world power gives power to the nation instead of to Democrats.

And Democrats hate the military, of course. Soldiers set a bad example. Here are men and women who possess what, if they chose, could be complete control over power. Yet they treat power with honor and respect. Members of the armed forces fight not to seize power for themselves but to ensure that power can bestow its favors upon all Americans.

This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order. Power has been trapped, abused and exploited by Democrats. Go to the ballot box and put an end to this abusive relationship. And let’s not hear any nonsense about letting the Democrats off if they promise to get counseling.

In the National Journal Blogs – Against the Grain, Josh Kraushaar notes that contrary to Democrat hopes, the Tea Party accurately reflects America’s concern with expanded government power and runaway spending.

…Despite the Democratic portrayal of the tea party as extreme, Americans have soured over the increased scope of government under President Obama and the Democratic Congress — and are looking for a course correction. A newly-released ABC News/Yahoo poll shows that 55 percent of Americans think the tea party can “effectively bring about major changes in the way the government operates.” …

Republican candidates who have openly advocated for conservative principles are, by and large, outperforming GOP colleagues who have run to the center.  Businessman Ron Johnson, who has directly taken on Sen. Russell Feingold’s economic liberalism, is over the 50 percent mark in most public polling. That’s all the more impressive, given that Feingold held strong personal approval ratings back home and represents a Democratic-leaning state in Wisconsin.  

…All this should put to rest the notion that somehow conservative Republican nominees are making it tougher for the party to hold onto contested Senate and House seats. In fact, the opposite is true.

Moderate Republican candidates are dramatically underachieving in several of the key races where they should hold a comfortable advantage.

In Illinois, where GOP Rep. Mark Kirk’s centrist voting record made him the Republican Senate recruit du jour of this cycle, has struggled to pull ahead of Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, despite the Democrat’s significant baggage. …

The Economist Blogs – Lexington looks at race issues.

…If such voters have now changed their minds, the reason is not that Mr Obama is black—he was black in 2008. And for all its momentous symbolism, his election is not the most recent evidence that America has turned the page on race. In June, in South Carolina of all states, Tim Scott, a black Republican, defeated the son of the segregationist Strom Thurmond in a primary, and is on his way to a seat in the House. Compare that to 1983, when a disgraceful number of Democrats in Chicago voted for the Republican rather than send the black Harold Washington to city hall.

All of that has gone. The electorate may be divided by race, but no longer mainly because of race. Some of Mr Obama’s enemies have tried to harness pockets of bigotry by painting him in various ways as un-American. But outright racism in politics is now beyond the pale and will probably have little to do with the coming rejection of the Democrats by the white working class. A wrecked economy and the feeling that their president is out of touch are reason enough. It has, after all, happened before. In two short years from 1992 to 1994, when Bill Clinton was president, white working-class support for the Republicans soared like a rocket from 47% to 61%. Nobody blamed that on skin colour.

The Economist – Editorial looks at more government baloney about the stimulus: the infrastructure improvements and jobs that weren’t.

DEMOCRATS, Republicans chant, are irresponsible big spenders. But in the run-up to the mid-terms, the Democrats ought to have had one example of spending at its best: investment in infrastructure. When they passed the $787 billion stimulus bill in February 2009, they promised an historic investment in roads, bridges and rail. It would put Americans to work quickly and raise productivity in the long term, a Keynesian kick with benefits for years to come. But this ambitious plan has had middling results. Infrastructure is still in need of investment; unemployment in the construction sector was 17.2% in September. Barack Obama is touting a new $50 billion infrastructure proposal, but as the mid-terms loom, it is probably too late.

The stimulus bill’s spending on infrastructure may have been doomed to mediocrity from the start. First, and most important, a relatively small share of the bill was actually devoted to infrastructure. Mr Obama called the bill “the largest new investment in our nation’s infrastructure since Eisenhower built an interstate highway system in the 1950s.” But even on the broadest definition of the term, infrastructure got $150 billion, under a fifth of the total. Just $64 billion, or 8% of the total, went to roads, public transport, rail, bridges, aviation and wastewater systems. …

Jennifer Rubin comments on NPR’s smooth moves.

Vivian Schiller, NPR’s CEO, who will be remembered for her firing of Juan Williams and her slander of him thereafter, has apologized. Sort of. Not to him, mind you. She has sent a letter that reads somewhat like a Dilbert cartoon — evidencing all the ham-handedness and nastiness you would expect, coupled with a little dollop of obsequiousness. She has written a letter to her “program colleagues,” revealing that Juan Williams had been warned (i.e., issued a verbal discipline) in the past — another inappropriate disclosure…

…She concedes that others could disagree with the decision. (Like every newsperson in America and about 90 percent of the public.) She then vaguely apologizes for the way in which the firing was handled…

…I think she means she’s sorry she didn’t give them talking points, but she’s not ashamed she smeared Williams by suggesting that he talk to his psychiatrist (which he does not have). Not clear whether she also regrets the squirrelly manner of the firing — over the phone (classy, guys). She closes by asking for suggestions.

Here are three. First, fire Schiller, who has brought disgrace (well, more than before) on NPR. She fired a valuable commodity, slandered him, incurred the wrath of the journalistic community, and put her organization’s funding at risk. Forget the morality of it; she’s simply incompetent. …

Debra J. Saunders tells us more about Juan Williams firing and adds her thoughts.

“Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis, where you don’t address reality,” Juan Williams observed rather prophetically on Bill O’Reilly’s show Monday night, before he made the comments that got him fired from his assignment as senior news analyst for National Public Radio.

…Too late. Williams already had handed ammo to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad called on NPR to investigate Williams Wednesday. In a statement Awad charged, “NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats.”

CAIR is an identity-politics organization that trolls for opportunities to take offense. Whenever anyone acknowledges the nexus between terrorism and radical Islam – not Islam, but radical Islam – CAIR cries foul. Wednesday afternoon within hours of the CAIR complaint, NPR rewarded CAIR’s campaign of intimidation with a scalp.

…Should the public then assume that NPR’s editorial standards demand that journalists ignore Islamic extremists who declare jihad – even while noting that it’s crazy to lump all Muslims as extremists? Ironically, NPR’s editorial standards comport with what Williams said about political correctness feeding the air of unreality. …

Peter Wehner also weighs in on National Politically intolerant Radio.

On the matter of the firing of Juan Williams by NPR, I wanted to add a few thoughts to what has already been said and written. The first is that this incident will not soon fade from memory; rather, it will be seen, over time, as an important moment that further discredited liberal media institutions. It took well-known but fairly abstract truths — NPR is taxpayer supported and dominated by a liberal political culture — and gave it a name, a context, and a human face. The fact that NPR’s Vivian Schiller turned out to be monumentally inept and mean-spirited may have been known to a few others before NPR cashiered Williams; now that fact is known by millions of others. Consequently, NPR will suffer a serious blow to its reputation and pay a considerable price (hopefully) in terms of funding.

Second, what was unmasked during the last week was the extent to which modern liberalism (at least as embodied by NPR) is antithetical to classical liberalism, which celebrated open-mindedness, a diversity of thought and opinion, and the spirited exchange of ideas. The depth of intolerance at National Public Radio is so deep that even a liberal like Juan Williams was thrown to the curb. His sin is not only that he didn’t parrot the Party Line closely enough; it was also that he didn’t parrot the Party Line at the appropriate Party Outlets.

…Out of this most recent controversy, Juan Williams will come out just fine. NPR, on the other hand, has emerged disgraced. All in all, not a bad outcome.

Jennifer Rubin spots a telling exchange between Karl Rove and Bob Schieffer about the Left’s hypocrisy over 501(c)4 organizations.

Karl Rove gave a feisty interview on Face the Nation to Bob Schieffer — who couldn’t really explain why it was somehow dangerous for conservative 501(c)4 groups to give to Republicans but perfectly fine if Big Labor gives to the Democrats…

…Moreover, the real difference between all these groups and Big Labor is that the latter takes money from union members involuntarily. Schieffer seemed unmoved by the facts. Rove then zeroed in on the massive hypocrisy game being played by the White House and bolstered by much of the mainstream media:

“Bob, I don’t remember you having a program in 2000, when the NAACP spent ten million dollars from one single donor, running ads anonymously contributed, attacking George W. Bush. …everybody is gone spun up about it this year when Republicans have started to follow what the Democrats have been doing and create 501(c)4s, which can use less than half their money for express advocacy. But you have the environment America, feminist majority, humane society… Vote Vets, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife and a bunch of others which are all liberal groups that have been using 501(c)4s with undisclosed money for years. … And it’s never been an issue until the President of the United States on the day when we have a bad economic jobs report, when we lose ninety-five (thousand) jobs in September, and the unemployment rate is 9.6 percent, the President of the United States goes out and calls conservatives at the Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads GPS, and says these are threats to democracy because they don’t disclose their donors. I don’t remember him ever saying that all these liberal groups were threats to democracy when they spent money exactly the same way we are.”

Ouch.

And just as quickly as the hue and cry arose in opposition to conservative groups, it will go quiet again as Democrats form their own entities for the 2012 campaign. Then all that outside money will be a sign of the vibrancy of American politics. And so it is — for both sides.

Tony Blankley discusses brilliant ideas to start reigning in the government.

…But the greater part of federal intrusion is generated by the permanent regulatory bureaucracy that burrows away in almost all of our federal agencies. Sometimes they are authorized by Congress to create and enforce regulations (like the incandescent light law). But over the generations, the culture that exists among the regulatory bureaucrats drives them constantly to seek out new targets for regulation and new methods for entangling Americans in their webs.

…Although I don’t believe it has ever been tried, a new Congress could try to use its power of the purse to begin to attrit the regulators. That is to suggest, Congress should order permanent, immediate and massive staff reductions among the regulators. Defund and de-authorize, say, 50 percent of the regulatory staff positions.

It actually takes a long time and a lot of hard work to conceive, write and legally enact a new regulation. If there were only half as many bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, they simply wouldn’t have the time to pass as many oppressive regulations as they do.

That would both slow down new regulations and make it harder for the regulators to enforce regulations already on the book. …

The WSJ editors highlight a new study by the Institute for Justice on the overregulation of American businesses.

When most people think of occupations requiring fingerprints and police reports, corner bookshop owners don’t spring to mind. Try telling that to Los Angeles, where many used booksellers are required by law to get a police permit and take a thumbprint from every 40-something trying to offload his collection of French poetry.

That’s one scene from a study to be released this week by the Institute for Justice, which has collected dozens of examples of regulations choking economic growth by taxing and over-licensing small businesses. In a survey of eight major cities, the study found that entrepreneurs routinely face obstacles of bureaucracy and red tape that deter them from otherwise promising opportunities.

…In many cases, the regulations were promoted by existing business owners who want barriers to new competition. In Washington, D.C., an interior designers guild succeeded in lobbying the city to require that all new designers take a 13-hour test and get a special license merely to reorganize your living room. In Newark, New Jersey, would-be barber shop owners must prove they’ve spent three years working in someone else’s hair cuttery before they can start their own. Even then, the city’s laws bar them from serving customers on Sunday and restrict working hours on other days of the week.

…Politicians of all stripes like to celebrate “small business” while running for office, but the reality is that they often strangle entrepreneurs once they get in power. Read the Institute for Justice study and you’ll better understand why the business of America is no longer business. It’s bureaucracy.