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We start today with American Narcissus, a piece in The Weekly Standard by Jonathan Last.

Why has Barack Obama failed so spectacularly? Is he too dogmatically liberal or too pragmatic? Is he a socialist, or an anticolonialist, or a philosopher-president? Or is it possible that Obama’s failures stem from something simpler: vanity. Politicians as a class are particularly susceptible to mirror-gazing. But Obama’s vanity is overwhelming. It defines him, his politics, and his presidency.

It’s revealed in lots of little stories. There was the time he bragged about how one of his campaign volunteers, who had tragically died of breast cancer, “insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama T-shirt.” There was the Nobel acceptance speech where he conceded, “I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war” (the emphasis is mine). There was the moment during the 2008 campaign when Obama appeared with a seal that was a mash-up of the Great Seal of the United States and his own campaign logo (with its motto Vero Possumus, “Yes we Can” in Latin). Just a few weeks ago, Obama was giving a speech when the actual presidential seal fell from the rostrum. “That’s all right,” he quipped. “All of you know who I am.” Oh yes, Mr. President, we certainly do. …

… Yet you don’t have to delve deep into armchair psychology to see how Obama’s vanity has shaped his presidency. In January 2009 he met with congressional leaders to discuss the stimulus package. The meeting was supposed to foster bipartisanship. Senator Jon Kyl questioned the plan’s mixture of spending and tax cuts. Obama’s response to him was, “I won.” A year later Obama held another meeting to foster bipartisanship for his health care reform plan. There was some technical back-and-forth about Republicans not having the chance to properly respond within the constraints of the format because President Obama had done some pontificating, as is his wont. Obama explained, “There was an imbalance on the opening statements because”—here he paused, self-satisfiedly—“I’m the president. And so I made, uh, I don’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”

There are lots of times when you get the sense that Obama views the powers of the presidency as little more than a shadow of his own person. When he journeyed to Copenhagen in October 2009 to pitch Chicago’s bid for the Olympics, his speech to the IOC was about—you guessed it: “Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night,” he told the committee, “people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of .??.??. ” and away he went. A short while later he was back in Copenhagen for the climate change summit. When things looked darkest, he personally commandeered the meeting to broker a “deal.” Which turned out to be worthless. In January 2010, Obama met with nervous Democratic congressmen to assure them that he wasn’t driving the party off a cliff. Confronted with worries that 2010 could be a worse off-year election than 1994, Obama explained to the professional politicians, “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.”

In the midst of the BP oil spill last summer, Obama explained, “My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about: the spill.” Read that again: The president thinks that the job of the president is to make certain the citizens correctly understand what’s on the president’s mind.

Obama’s vanity is even more jarring when paraded in the foreign arena. …

Jennifer Rubin continues the thought.

… If Obama is ungracious (toward his predecessor), oblivious (to the desires of the voters), and frustrated (by the Palestinians’ and Israelis’ refusal to make a deal under his auspices), it is because he is unable to grasp that it’s not all about him. But the good news is that, as he reportedly did in the Senate, he may conclude that being president is really ”so boring.” (He certainly doesn’t seem to be having fun, does he?) In that case, he might not really care all that much about trying to ingratiate himself with the voters. It very well might not be “worth it” in his mind to temper his views in order to get a second term. Freed from the burdens of the presidency he then might do what he loves best — write books and give speeches about himself. Or maybe he can give speeches about writing books about himself.

Bill Kristol with a recent vignette that will add to the legend.

… After a contentious economic summit where the president was forced to defend the Fed’s ill-advised monetary policies, a summit that followed on the heels of the biggest midterm electoral defeat ever suffered by an elected first-term president, a defeat partly due to his ill-advised fiscal policies, did Obama really expect a reporter to stand up at the end of last week and ask, “Mr. President, what compliments did you receive from foreign leaders?”

That is, apparently, exactly what the president expected.

Just how is our shining light doing on the world stage? Two items on the failure in Seoul. First Charles Krauthammer.

Whenever a president walks into a room with another head of state and he walks out empty-handed — he’s got a failure on his hands.

And this was self-inflicted. With Obama it’s now becoming a ritual. It’s a combination of incompetence,  inexperience, and arrogance. He was handed a treaty by the Bush administration. It was done. But he wanted to improve on it. And instead, so far, he’s got nothing. …

And from Foreign Policy, a professional’s view.

President Obama’s failure to conclude the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) is a disaster. It reveals a stunning level of ineptitude and seriously undermines America’s leadership in the global economy. The implications extend far beyond selling Buicks in Busan.

Unlike some of the trade agreements the United States has pursued in the last decade, this one is with an economically significant partner. KORUS could bring billions of dollars of new trade opportunities and the Obama administration had cited it as one part of its National Export Initiative, a plan to double U.S. exports in five years.

But there are really two distinct issues in contemplating the significance of the failed talks: the economic merits and questions of diplomatic competence. The latter is really the story of the day. …

Summing all this up we have Bret Stephens on the dangers of America’s will to weakness. 

Lately in the news:

Beijing provokes clashes with the navies of both Indonesia and Japan as part of a bid to claim the South China Sea. Tokyo is in a serious diplomatic row with Russia over the South Kuril islands, a leftover dispute from 1945. There are credible fears that Tehran and Damascus will use the anticipated indictment of Hezbollah figures by a U.N. tribunal to overthrow the elected Lebanese government. Managua is attempting to annex a sliver of Costa Rica, a nation much too virtuous to have an army of its own. And speaking of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega is setting himself up as another Hugo Chávez by running, unconstitutionally, for another term. Both men are friends and allies of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

About all of this, the Obama administration has basically done nothing. As Sarah Palin might say: How’s that multi-poley stuff workin’ out for ya?

Throughout the Bush years, “multipolarity” was held up as the intelligent and necessary alternative to the supposedly go-it-alone approach to the world of the incumbent administration. French President Jacques Chirac was for it: “I have no doubt,” he said in 2003, “that the multipolar vision of the world that I have defended for some time is certainly supported by a large majority of countries throughout the world.” So were such doyens of the U.S. foreign policy establishment as Fareed Zakaria and Francis Fukuyama. …

So what are the current conditions of sea life in the Gulf of Mexico? Would you be surprised to learn all the critters are thriving? National Review has the story.

The catastrophists were wrong (again) about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. There have been no major fish die-offs. On the contrary, a comprehensive new study says that in some of the most heavily fished areas of the Gulf of Mexico, various forms of sea life, from shrimp to sharks, have seen their populations triple since before the spill. Some species, including shrimp and croaker, did even better.

And meanwhile, the media has greatly exaggerated damage found in studies about coral, which is in some ways more vulnerable to oil and dispersant. Most of it is doing fine.

The growth of the fish population is not occurring because oil is good for fish. Rather, it is occurring because fishing is bad for fish. When fishing was banned for months during the spill, the Gulf of Mexico experienced an unprecedented marine renaissance that overwhelmed any negative environmental consequences the oil may have had, researchers say.

Even the researchers themselves, however, were surprised by the results. “We expected there to be virtually no fish out there based on all the reports we were getting about the toxicity of the dispersant and the toxicity of the hydrocarbons, and reports that hypoxia [low oxygen] had been created as a result of the oil and dispersant,” says John Valentine, who directed the study. “In every way you can imagine, it should have been a hostile environment for fish and crabs; our collection showed that was not the case.”

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Charles Krauthammer comments on Obama’s trip to India, and the importance of the US relationship with India.

…The story of the next half-century will be how Asia accommodates and/or contains China’s expansion.

Nor is this some far-off concern. China’s aggressive territorial claims on resource-rich waters claimed by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan are already roiling the neighborhood. Traditionally, Japan has been the major regional counterbalance. But an aging, shrinking Japan can no longer sustain that role. Symbolic of the dramatic shift in power balance between once-poor China and once-dominant Japan was the resolution of their recent maritime crisis. Japan had detained a Chinese captain in a territorial-waters dispute. China imposed a rare-earth mineral embargo. Japan capitulated.

That makes the traditional U.S. role as offshore balancer all the more important. China’s neighbors from South Korea all the way around to India are in need of U.S. support of their own efforts at resisting Chinese dominion.

And of all these countries, India, which has fought a border war with China, is the most natural anchor for such a U.S. partnership. It’s not just our inherent affinities – being democratic, English-speaking, free-market and dedicated to the rule of law. It is also the coincidence of our strategic imperatives: We both face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China.

…China is no enemy, but it remains troublingly adversarial. Which is why India must be the center of our Asian diplomacy. …

In the National Review, Andy McCarthy tells us how Obama continues to offend Israel, this time by criticizing Israel while in Indonesia.

…Sadly, there is nothing new in Obama’s amateurish inflation of Israeli construction from a sore point to a flash point in Israeli-Palestinian tensions. Nor is there novelty in his hectoring of Israel for insufficient indulgence of a “negotiating partner” that does not accept its right to exist. If there were nothing more, there’d be little point in recounting this story.

But there is a new wrinkle in Obama’s Israel-bashing: the setting. While the president’s post-election get-out-of-Dodge tour has included stops in New Delhi, Seoul, and Tokyo, he opted to zing the Zionist entity while touring Jakarta. This was no coincidence: By population, Indonesia is the world’s largest Islamic country, home to 200 million Muslims.

…It also turns out that this exemplary Islamic nation has about as much tolerance for Israel as the Palestinians do. Like Hamas and Fatah, Indonesia does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. To be sure, the national motto is “Unity in Diversity” — inducing Obama to compare it favorably with America’s E Pluribus Unum. But it ought to come with an asterisk: Israelis are not permitted to enter Indonesia, nor are Israeli aircraft permitted to fly in its airspace.

What better perch could an American president find from which to slam a staunch American ally? It’s nice to know “Indonesia is a part of” President Obama, but Judeo-Christian tolerance — the kind Israel lives and Jakarta shuns — is part of America.

Peter Wehner compiles some election statistics for us.

In shifting through the fine analysis that emerged in the aftermath of last week’s midterm elections, a few data points are particularly noteworthy…

Independents comprised 28 percent of the electorate and supported Republican congressional candidates by a margin of 56 to 38 percent. That represents a 36-point turnaround from the last midterm election, in 2006, when independents supported Democratic congressional candidates by 57 to 39 percent. In addition, independents trust Republicans to do a better job than Democrats by a margin of 23 points on jobs and employment, 23 points on the economy, 27 points on government spending, and 31 points on taxes.

Voters support repealing/replacing ObamaCare by 51 to 42 percent. Democrats oppose repeal by 80 to 16 percent — but both independents (by 57 to 31 percent) and Republicans (by 87 to 7 percent) want to repeal and replace it.

Sixty-five percent of voters said that the stimulus bill either hurt the economy or did no good — and those voters overwhelmingly favored the GOP. …

Daniel Henninger, in the WSJ, comments on how Dems have no understanding of business.

…The Democrats running things the past two years proved they have no clue about the business of business. In their world, the real world of the private economy is an abstraction, a political figment.

Exhibit A: Along the road to ObamaCare, the party’s planners inserted into the bill the now- famous 1099 provision, requiring businesses to do an IRS report for any transaction over $600 annually. No member of Congress, White House staffer or party flunky thought to say, “Oh, wow, this 1099 requirement will crush people running their own businesses. Are we sure we want to do this?” Yes, and that 1099 fiasco is a metaphor now for the modern Democratic Party. …

…much of what this Democratic Congress did, or tried to do, was like throwing Molotov cocktails at business. It began in early 2009 with the cap-and-trade climate bill. …

At his news conference last week, Mr. Obama still wouldn’t rule out the EPA’s impending “carbon finding” to regulate emissions, another Freddy Krueger nightmare for the average business. …

Charlie Cook reviews election surprises in the National Journal.

…Beyond the symbolism and images, big mistakes were made and Democrats seem happy to blame President Obama and the economy and not accept responsibility for pursuing an agenda that turned independent voters, who had voted by an 18-point margin in 2006 for Democrats, to vote for Republicans by an 18-point margin in 2010, according to exit polls.

This huge shift from one midterm election to the next, by a group that constitutes 26 percent of the electorate, is seismic. It is not a matter of turnout or partisan intensity; it is a clear indication that Democrats alienated voters in the middle who saw an agenda in 2009 and 2010 that was quite different and much more ideological that the one described in 2006 and 2008.

For this, the bulk of House and Senate Democrats deserve responsibility but don’t seem to be accepting it. …

Clive Crook offers Obama some tips on how to win back voters.

…I think many of the policy outcomes under Obama have been good. But instead of owning the policies from the start, he was backed into them. Not just sometimes, but every time.

To recover in 2012 Obama will need a stronger economy, which should happen. He will need the GOP to discredit itself in Congress, which seems likely. It would also help if the Tea Party learned nothing from Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado, and kept harming its own prospects, which looks plausible too. But the hardest thing is that from now on Obama must lead with more conviction, and choose to disappoint either the left or the centre, not both.

Obama’s unconstrained policy preferences (unlike mine) are evidently more progressive than centrist. For the sake of argument, suppose those preferences are correct. Suppose his uncompromised agenda would be good for the country. As a practical matter, he would still need to judge how far the country is willing to be moved. A good leader has to anticipate those limits, not blunder into them every time, as he has. From a tactical point of view, he should also bear two other things in mind. One is that the left despises compromise, making it much harder to please than the centre. The other is that the left, even if you let it down, is not going to vote Republican.

In the National Journal, Josh Kraushaar previews the election landscape of 2012.

…In the House, the Republican wave couldn’t have come at a better time for the ascendant party. The GOP now has unilateral control of redistricting in key battleground states for the upcoming election cycle. That will allow the GOP to protect many of their newfound majority-makers and redistrict other Democrats out of existence. And that’s on top of reapportionment. The states slated to gain House seats – Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Washington — as a whole tilt in favor of Republicans. The ones projected to lose representation are predominantly Democratic: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Republican State Legislative Committee Executive Director Chris Jankowski estimated the GOP will gain between 25 and 30 additional House seats from the reapportionment and redistricting process alone, a number that makes it all the more difficult for Democrats to win back the seats necessary to retake the majority. Republicans already are slated to hold between 241 and 244 seats in the new Congress, their largest majority since 1946.

…Pelosi’s decision to stick around as minority leader is another factor that bodes well for House Republicans protecting their majorities in 2012. … 

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In the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz gives a grudging center-left comparison of the president and his predecessor.

…The contrast could hardly have been sharper. Bush, with his short, declarative sentences, so sure of himself he felt no need to probe further on one of the most divisive ethical issues of his tenure. Obama, with his finely rendered prose, meandering around as he inspects the subject from various angles, almost like a think-tank analyst.

Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist who has been an enthusiastic supporter of the 44th president and has been granted interviews and invites to group luncheons, wrote that Obama’s 60 Minutes appearance was “uninspired and uninspiring,” offering “no vision of a brighter tomorrow.”

…Still, it felt like we were watching The Decider vs. The Agonizer. The man who approved torture and the man who tortures himself. …

David Harsanyi calls the Dems on their spending addiction in light of the deficit commission’s recommendations.

…Democrats believe we have a taxing problem — more specifically, a not-taxing-the-rich-enough problem — rather than a spending problem. How many times have we heard the silly platitude about having to “pay” for tax cuts? We pay for spending, not tax cuts.

But that particular impenetrable philosophical divide is just the beginning. Outside of military spending, the co-chairs found that one of the most effective areas to save money — around $30 billion yearly — was by shaving 10 percent of the federal workforce and freezing all salaries.

Not a big deal, considering USA Today recently reported that the number of people in the massive federal workforce earning more than $150,000 had doubled since January 2009 — long after Washington supposedly understood the magnitude of the problem.

As you know, public employees are the wellspring of left-wing political support. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was the single largest outside spender on the 2010 elections. Public-sector unions spent more than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce despite what you may have heard. And they spent taxpayer dollars. What are the chances of Democrats cutting 10 percent of that support?

What’s more holy than a government pension? An entitlement program, of course. Democrats aren’t interested in “reforming” these programs; they’re interested in finding ways to pay for them. There’s a difference. (Remember, the last time liberals decided it was time for reform, Washington took over an eighth of the economy.)…

We have commentary from the Corner on the deficit commission report. Up first, Samuel Staley comments on lax goals that the deficit commission set to reign in out-of-control government spending.

I’m wading through the Powerpoint of the deficit-reduction committee. While it doesn’t seem to pull punches on how desperate our fiscal condition has become, I can already see it’s not going far enough. Their goal is to eliminate annual federal deficits in 30 years! They have also set a long-term goal of reducing federal tax revenues to 21 percent of GDP. While that’s much lower than now, we need to get federal, state, and local government spending to below 20 percent if we really want to promote growth, according to the late economist Gerald Scully. Even more radical fiscal surgery will be needed if we really want to get a handle on federal spending.

Next from the Corner, Bob Stein lists his comments on the deficit commission’s report.

…Here’s what I don’t like:

…? Although the plan says it would try to cap revenue as a share of GDP at 21 percent, there is nothing in the plan that would do so. Gradually, productivity will push a larger share of income into the higher marginal tax brackets, resulting in higher revenue relative to GDP.

…? The plan calls for increasing the tax base for Social Security. This is a large tax hike for many workers.

…? The tax plan raises the cap-gains and dividends tax rates to 28 percent. …

Also from the Corner, Anthony Randazzo criticizes some of the deficit commission’s premises.

…The report perpetuates the belief that we need to wait until recovery sets in to start making reforms, and it argues that government should be investing in education, infrastructure, and high-value R&D to promote growth.

These wrong-direction ideas are all well-intentioned and understandable. But we can’t start cutting the deficit without recognizing that true recovery will only take hold once the current government interventions — stimulus spending, cash-for-clunkers, quantitative easing, HAMP, etc. — preventing the realignment of resources in the economy are removed. Moreover, any deficit-reduction plan that continues to believe government investment in the economy will promote growth is likely to be a failure.

Throwing more federal money at education has not proven to be successful, while local-level reforms — such as Washington D.C.’s — have yielded much higher returns. While there is certainly a role for government in maintaining a national infrastructure, continuing to focus on infrastructure spending as a means of boosting recovery is reaching levels of cognitive dissonance. And the argument that the private sector picks winners and losers in development better than government is a tired one, but still accurate and applicable.

 Nevertheless, when it comes to specifics for cuts in the plan, there are some good ones. Here is a sample…

And last from the Corner, Yuval Levin points out that the deficit commission’s positions are a surprisingly realistic start for Democrats.

The preliminary report from the co-chairs of the president’s deficit commission makes for a very plausible leftmost boundary of the serious fiscal-policy debate. If this is the Obama administration’s starting position in the conversation about deficit and debt reduction, it will be a serious position and a constructive conversation. They will obviously need to be willing to move rightward on some key issues (especially the entire health-care question, which is the report’s most glaring and serious weakness, and is at the heart of our crisis of public finances). But on social security, discretionary spending, and many of the proposed tax reforms, this is a very good start.

The people who treat even this as going too far and “simply unacceptable” (to borrow the phrase employed by the outgoing Speaker of the House) are simply not serious about the problems we confront, and not ready for the kind of debate the country needs to have about how to get out of the hole we have been digging for ourselves and how to get beyond the social-democratic welfare-state fantasy that has dominated our political imagination for a century and think seriously about what genuine democratic-capitalism with a responsible safety net for the poor ought to look like.

Jennifer Rubin also weighs in on the report.

…Second, it is quite extraordinary that the plan puts forth a credible version of tax reform. Did you expect the commission to come forward with a reduction in the corporate tax rate and a top individual rate of 24 percent? I sure didn’t. This represents a fundamental shift for Democrats, at least those on the panel who embraced the essential principles of the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. But, you say, what about the changes to the home mortgage deduction? We’ll have to do the math, but with a drastic reduction in individual rates, they may be “worth it.” And, bluntly, it would also cause people to more closely examine how much house they can afford. (If you trust the market, once the subsidy goes away, demand would lessen and prices should come down, making housing somewhat more affordable.)

And finally, we need to be clear-eyed about the defense cuts. We are fighting a global war on terrorism, may find ourselves embroiled in a military confrontation with Iran, and must continue to build missile defense systems. The cuts have to be assessed in light of our security needs and the threats we face. Republicans who embrace a robust, internationalist foreign policy should be wary.

In sum, I’m mildly shocked it was as good as it was. Conservatives would do well to embrace the chunks of it they can and offer plausible alternatives to the rest (e.g., repealing ObamaCare, for starters).

Jennifer Rubin adds to her commentary on the deficit commission report.

As I observed yesterday, the debt commission came out with a preliminary report that was better than expected from the perspective of conservatives and an anathema to liberals. The Wall Street Journal editors outline some of the negative aspects of the report: adhering to ObamaCare, too much timidity on discretionary spending cuts and entitlements, and an anti-jobs hike in the payroll tax. But the editors are mildly impressed…

…House Republicans should react accordingly, which means taking what they like from the commission report and making it part of their own budget proposals. If Senate Democrats and Mr. Obama want to regain any fiscal credibility, they’ll be willing to listen and talk. If not, the voters will certainly have a choice in 2012.

To a large extent, then, the report is a useful political document for the right. It helps sniff out who is serious about spending restraint and who is not, and it embraces a methodology for tax reform that conservatives can support and liberals almost certainly can’t. (Let the “rich” pay have a top marginal rate of 24 percent? Oh the horror!) …

The WSJ editors look at another failed aspect of Obamacare.

…Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.

States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. …

…Pre-existing conditions sometimes do lead to genuine hardships, and polls show that voters are worried about the relatively rare horror stories. More modest fixes could bring more stability to the individual market, while Republicans support a boost in funding for the high-risk pools that 35 states offer as a safety net. The government didn’t need to annex a sixth of the economy and create a multitrillion-dollar entitlement to help 8,011 people.

In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Toby Harnden looks at the changes in journalism on both sides of the pond.

Often caught between the two, I’ve always been fascinated by the differences between journalism in Britain and the United States. One of the most striking things is the contrast between the self-image of journalists on either side of the Pond. In Britain, journalists (who prefer the term “hacks”) mostly view themselves as grubby tradesmen, living proof of Nicholas Tomalin’s dictum that “the only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability”.

In the US, journalists have traditionally been much more self-important, viewing themselves as part of a noble profession to be venerated and respected in the same way as doctors, lawyers and accountants. They have tended to see themselves as part of the Establishment. The difference has often been on display at White House press conferences, with long-winded, respectful, often pompous American questions contrasting with short, aggressive and impertinent British questions (which sometimes elicit much better answers). …

…Perhaps related to the breaking down of the divide between British and American journalism is the blurring of the old distinction between print and the web. Some very big names are moving to web-only outlets. Tina Brown recently hired Howard Kurtz at the Beast while Howard Fineman and Peter Goodman have gone to the Huffington Post. The journalistic trend in the US is away from the insider, access-based American model towards the iconoclastic, reporting-with-attitude British model. …

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Tony Blankley wants new members of Congress to pay attention to foreign policy as well.

…There always has been a tendency for new, inexperienced candidates for federal office to be more focused initially on domestic issues – because their voters are. But for GOP congressmen and senators, their fundamental values – a powerful patriotism, a sense of right and wrong and a practical understanding of human nature as capable of great evil – tends over time to lead them to a firmer foreign and military policy posture than that held by liberal Democrats.

…For instance, regarding the New START with Russia, many of its skeptics are established neoconservatives who don’t contest the objective but seriously doubt the effectiveness of the details. To call such men and women isolationist is risible.

Reaganite foreign policy experts have always been much more skeptical of particular disarmament treaties. And with China rushing ahead on its nuclear program, we need to consider our stockpile requirements in the Chinese context every bit as much as we do the poorer Russian capabilities. …

In the WSJ, Allysia Finley offers tough love in an open letter to California.

Listen up, California. The other 48 states—your cousin New York excluded—are sick of your bratty arrogance. You’re the Lindsay Lohan of states: a prima donna who once showed some talent but is now too wasted to do anything with it.

After enjoying ephemeral highs and spending binges, you suffer crashes that culminate in brief, unsuccessful stints in rehab. This cycle repeats itself every five to 10 years, as the rest of the country looks on with a mixture of horror and amusement. We’d feel sorry for you if you didn’t constantly flip us the bird.

Instead, we’re making bets on how long it will be before your next meltdown. Oh, wait—you’re already melting down.

You’ve racked up nearly $70 billion in general obligation debt, and that doesn’t include your $500 billion unfunded pension liability. Your own analysts predict you’ll face a hole of at least $80 billion over the next four years. …

…So here’s our final warning: When you inevitably crash and burn, don’t count on us to bail you out.

Kyle-Ann Shiver, in Pajamas Media, says that California wins the Dumbest State award.

It’s the proverbial morning after and with votes counted, California has won the Dumbest State Award in a historic landslide of monstrous proportions.

All Californians can now see Greece from their bedroom windows.  No need to even go to the backyards and crane their little necks.

In the coming years, the unions, who have been bilking Californians in a protection-racket type scheme, will be taking to the streets in massive, destructive temper tantrums just like those out-in-the-cold workers in other failed socialist states across the big pond. It won’t be pretty.

…Not to be outdone by Pelosi voters, those Californians in the 13th district reelected Rep. Pete Stark, the traitor who has made a name for himself trashing the very Constitution he swears to protect and defend.  Pete Stark has the ignominious distinction of having told a constituent to her face that the federal “government in this country can do most anything.” Never has a U.S. representative so blatantly shredded the very document he is sworn to preserve, a document that expressly tells our federal government the many things it cannot do.  Every Californian who pulled the lever for this Benedict Arnold ought to hang his head in shame and should never show his face in public again. …

In Transterrestrial Musings, Rand Simberg comments on watching Californians give up their last opportunity to turn the state’s financial situation around.

We seem to have reached a tipping point here. Too many Californians think that they can have both lunatic environmental and economic policies, and a viable economy. Almost every initiative went the wrong way, as did the gubernatorial and senatorial elections, though the former was partly a result of an awful Republican candidate — Jerry Brown might have been beatable by Chuck DeVore.

It’s a positive feedback situation with increasingly negative results. The economic ignorami in the electorate vote for idiotic propositions, and send economic ignorami to Sacramento in the legislature and governor’s mansion, resulting in flight by the sensible, continuing to distill and concentrate the idiocy in the electorate. It will end in bankruptcy (the state is basically already there), and then they’ll demand a bailout from the rest of the country. Fortunately, with the new Congress, they won’t get it. But I don’t know if the state is salvageable at this point. It’s some of the best real estate on earth, but its current inhabitants don’t deserve it, and have squandered a great legacy.

It’s an opportunity for other states to poach a lot of space companies, I think.

Want to know why CA is broke? A post in Maggie’s Farm explains part of the reason why California dreamin’ has turned into a nightmare. Hundreds and hundreds of state agencies.

California Academic Performance Index (API) California Access for Infants and Mothers California Acupuncture Board California Administrative Office of the Courts California Adoptions Branch California African American Museum California Agricultural Export Program California Agricultural Labor Relations Board California Agricultural Statistics Service California Air Resources Board (CARB) California Allocation Board California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority California Animal Health and Food Safety Services California Anti-Terrorism Information Center California Apprenticeship Council California Arbitration Certification Program California Architects Board California Area VI Developmental Disabilities Board California Arts Council California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus California Assembly Democratic Caucus California Assembly Republican Caucus California Athletic Commission * California Attorney General

Those are just the As. The rest are below the fold.

Ilya Somin, Of Volokh Conspiracy writes an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which provides an overview of the Obamacare litigation, and explains how the states and organizations contesting the constitutionality of the law might actually win.

…In the most recent of the three rulings, Florida federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson wrote that the government’s claim that the mandate is clearly authorized by existing Supreme Court precedent is “not even a close call.” He points out that “[t]he power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent,” because no previous Supreme Court decision ever authorized Congress to force ordinary citizens to buy products they did not want.

…The federal government claims that Congress has the power to impose the mandate under the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Tax Clause of the Constitution. On the first two claims, Judge Vinson ruled that Supreme Court precedent doesn’t clearly support the government, thereby enabling the plaintiffs’ lawsuit to go forward. He outright rejected the government’s claim that the mandate is constitutional because it is a “tax.” It is instead a financial penalty for refusing to comply with a federal regulation. As Judge Vinson pointed out, congressional leaders consistently emphasized before the law’s enactment that it was not a tax.

…A series of flawed Supreme Court decisions have expanded Congress’ Commerce Clause authority well beyond what the text of the Constitution permits. These rulings allow the federal government to regulate almost any “economic activity.” But, as Judge Vinson emphasized, even they do not give Congress the power to regulate people “based solely on citizenship and on being alive.” Far from engaging in “economic activity,” people who decide not to purchase health insurance are actually refraining from doing so.

…Some defenders of the law claim that the individual mandate is similar to federal laws banning racial discrimination against customers by businesses such as motels and restaurants. But federal antidiscrimination laws apply only to existing businesses already engaged in commercial activity in the regulated industry. By contrast, uninsured individuals are not businesses and, by definition, are not participating in the insurance industry. …

In Volokh, Somin posts on his article above and adds these thoughts:

…The op ed focuses primarily on the recent district court decisions in the Virginia, Michigan, and Florida cases, which I blogged about in more detail here, here, and here. So there will be few new points for those who have closely followed my previous VC writings on the mandate litigation. My main purpose in the op ed was to briefly analyze the three rulings and explain why the anti-mandate plaintiffs have a strong case that could well prevail, even though they still face an uphill struggle.

I would add that the results of the recent election modestly increase the chances that the plaintiffs will win. Federal courts are unlikely to strike down a major federal policy initiative that has strong presidential, congressional, and popular support. But last week’s elections brought to power a House majority that opposes the Obama health care plan, strengthened plan opponents in the Senate, and reaffirmed that it remains unpopular (although the election turned primarily on the economy, the health care plan probably increased the magnitude of the Democrats’ defeat). A recent AP poll found that 52% of likely voters oppose the plan, with 41% supporting it…

…Ideally, such “legal realist” factors should not influence judicial decision-making. But the historical evidence suggests that they often do. Judges are unlikely to strike down the mandate merely because the political winds are blowing against it. But those inclined to do so for other reasons are now less likely to be deterred by fear of a showdown with a president, Congress, and public opinion unified against them.

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Christopher Hitchens comments on a number of serious issues in Iraq.

…On the morning that I received that note, the Washington Post carried a brief and heart-breaking report. It described a lawsuit, brought to the Baghdad District Court by a coalition of “civil society and human rights organizations.” The suit demanded that elected Iraqi parliamentarians give back the salaries they have so far earned, and forego future payments, until they have overcome the paralyzing torpor that has deprived the country of the fruits of its hard-won right to vote. A short while ago, the same alliance of forces convinced the nation’s Supreme Court to order the lawmakers to resume their negotiations.

…There are still immense dangers facing any Iraqi who wants to express a democratic or nonsectarian opinion, but these dangers do not come so much from the state. They come from the prowling, sleepless murder-gangs who, almost every day, find ways of killing civilians either selectively or en masse. By some kind of convention, we still agree to refer to these people as insurgents. (In the recently fizzled debate over WikiLeaks, the hideous casualties the “insurgents” inflict were also described semi-neutrally in the press as coming from “other Iraqis,” though witnesses to the recent massacre of a Baghdad Christian congregation spoke of hearing foreign Arab accents among the assassins.) But in what possible sense can such actions be described as a rebellion or an insurgency, especially in a society that now offers its citizens at least some of the means of lawful dissent and redress?

This is the aspect of our intervention that is unquantifiable. As with Afghanistan, we cannot know the long-term effect of promulgating a federal constitution, holding elections, opening clinics and schools for women, and attempting to protect the rights of minorities. And the Afghan and Iraqi governments are such wretched simulacra of the principles they are supposed to embody that results are even harder to gauge. The principles may even be discredited by association with corruption. Still, we have to remain on the side of those Iraqis and Afghans who fight against such desperate odds to make these principles real and to carry them into the future. …

The nation has experienced a recession, but government has not. Mark Steyn writes about the unsustainability of the ever-growing government.

…In the year after the passage of Obama’s “stimulus”, the private sector lost 2.5 million jobs, but the federal government gained 416,000 jobs. Even if one accepts the government’s ludicrous concept of “creating or saving” jobs, by its own figures four out of every five jobs “created or saved” were government jobs. “Stimulus” stimulates government, not the economy.

…Jobs rarely “come back”. …After the recession of the early Nineties, America lost some three million jobs in manufacturing but gained a little under the same number in construction. Then the subprime hit the fan, and America now has more housing stock than it will need for a generation. So what replaces those three million lost construction jobs? What are all those carpenters, plasterers, excavators going to be doing? Not to mention the realtors, home-loan bankers, contract lawyers, rental-income accountants and other “professional service” cube people whose business also relies to one degree or another on a soaraway property market.

What if we’ve run out of “next”?

For the Obamatrons, government is what comes next. Government jobs, government “light rail” projects, government “green jobs” pork projects…Non-jobs for a Potemkin Main Street. …

…The new class war in the western world is between “public servants” and the rest of us. …To reprise my favorite Ronald Reagan line:

We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around.

…Alas, in Reagan’s own country, we are atrophying into a government that has a nation. That’s what November 2nd was about.

In the Telegraph, UK, Toby Harnden discusses Obama’s reaction to the elections, and gives an overview of where this may lead.

…It seems much more likely that Obama will double down on his strategy during his first two years, moving to the Left to appease his critics there and challenging Republicans, much as President Harry Truman did after 1946 when he railed against the “do-nothing” Republican-controlled Congress. Two years later, Republicans lost 75 House seats and Truman was returned to the White House.

This time, however, Republicans do not control Congress. They won back the House but fell short in the Senate.

Their failure to secure ascendancy in both chambers may be a blessing in disguise. The defeat of candidates like Christine O’Donnell of Delaware and Sharron Angle of Nevada has helped fuel a complacent Washington consensus that the Tea Party failed. Never mind that his grassroots anti-tax, small-government “constitutional conservatism” movement provided the energy and momentum behind the biggest congressional election victory in 62 years.

…Best of all for Republicans is that Democrat Senator Harry Reid will remain Senate Majority Leader after squeezing home against Angle, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the ousted House Speaker, looks set to become House Minority Leader. This gives Republicans the opportunity to run against the Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate again in 2012 – their very presence indicating that Democrats failed to learn from 2010.  …

In NRO’s - The Feed, Greg Pollowitz posts a piece on Notre Dame’s karma.

After honoring President Barack Obama during last May’s commencement ceremonies, the University of Notre Dame has seen less contributions and is feeling financial heat. In May 2009, debate was heated over the fact that Notre Dame, a Catholic university, invited President Obama to speak at its graduation. It was controversial mainly because some of Obama’s policies are contrary to church doctrine. Katie Walker of American Life League (ALL) tells OneNewsNow the school has paid a price. “Notre Dame has come out $120 million short for the fiscal year in which President Obama spoke during commencement and received an honorary law degree,” she reports. She believes that staggering number is in direct response of alumni and others around the country who feel scandalized “that Notre Dame would host this man and give one of the most pro-abortion presidents in the nation’s history an honorary law degree.”

Jennifer Rubin discusses liberal reactions to the White House continuing to steer hard left.

…The less-deluded Democrats are furious now, convinced that the White House is on a political suicide mission. The defeated Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink is beside herself:

“They got a huge wake-up call [on election day], but unfortunately they took a lot of Democrats down with them,” said Sink of the White House.

…“I think they were tone-deaf,” she said. “They weren’t interested in hearing my opinion on what was happening on the ground with the oil spill. And they never acknowledged that they had problems with the acceptance of health care reform.”

The new law, she said, is “unpopular particularly among seniors” — a key voting bloc in the Sunshine State. …

In the Weekly Standard Blog, Victorino Matus highlights Charles Lane’s projections on how the Census will affect electoral votes.

As the Washington Post’s Charles Lane reminds us,

Since the U.S. population continues to flow South and West, reapportionment will probably add House seats in red states and subtract them in blue states. Thus, the Census looks like a setback for Democratic chances to win the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president.

…Take the 22 states that voted for John McCain as the GOP base in the 2012 presidential election. That base is about to grow from 173 electoral votes to 180. And if Republicans hold it, they could get to 271 by carrying just six more states—Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, Virginia and Nevada—each of which has voted GOP in a majority of the last ten elections.

As it happens, all six of these states, except for North Carolina, will have Republican governors next year, and all six, except for Nevada, will have Republican state legislatures. …

Indians are about to say to the president, “Ghandi, schmandi. Give it a rest please!” Jim Yardley in the NYTimes discusses Obama’s continual references to Gandhi, but then mentions a serious indication of Obama’s ignorance.

… India’s political establishment, if thrilled by the visit, is also withholding judgment. Mr. Obama was faulted in New Delhi for some early missteps, including his comment that China should play an active role in South Asia. His battering in the midterm elections has raised concerns about his political viability. And many Indian officials still hold a torch for former President George W. Bush, who was popular for pushing through a landmark civilian nuclear deal between the two countries.

Mr. Obama’s visit is intended to dispel those doubts and deepen a partnership rooted in shared democratic values. Since taking office, he has already met several times with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as well as with other delegations of Indian officials. On several occasions, he has cited his deep admiration for Gandhi, perhaps as evidence of his fondness for India.

“The impression on the Indian side is every time you meet him, he talks about Gandhi,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express, a leading English-language newspaper, adding that the repeated references struck some officials as platitudinous. … 

Marty Peretz has more on the one note president.

…as an eminent Indian journalist put it to Yardley, “…the impression on the Indian side is every time you meet him, he talks about Gandhi.” But, as Sheryl Stolberg also of the Times, points out this morning, all that students questioning him wanted to discuss was “jihad.” And he was ready with that bull-shitty quarter truth that “Well, the phrase jihad has a lot of meanings within Islam and is subject to a a lot of different interpretations.” …

…Obama continued: All of us recognize that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence towards innocent people that is never justified. So, I think, one of the challenges that we face is how do we isolate those who have distorted notions of religious war.

This does not sit well with the billion Indians, especially Hindu Indians, who are sitting ducks for jihadist terror. and it certainly did not sit well with the president’s listeners. (Not that the Hindus -or the Israelis- are completely free of their own fanatics.) But, believe me, what defines Islam these days is not the Sufis.

…Even among our “allies” in the Yemeni government, among our “fighting comrades” in Afghanistan, among our friends in the Pakistani sort-of state, there appears to be no anger at the debauchery of random liquidation. And not in the Sudan either. These are the countries of the salient jihad: Al-Qaeda plus the indifference of the rest. If the Israelis were to permit it they, too, would be the victims. …

Don Boudreaux makes a very important delineation about what it means for the government to be “pro-business”, in Cafe Hayek.

…There are two ways for a government to be ‘pro-business.’  The first way is to avoid interfering in capitalist acts among consenting adults – that is, to keep taxes low, regulations few, and subsidies non-existent.  This ‘pro-business’ stance promotes widespread prosperity because in reality it isn’t so much pro-business as it is pro-consumer.  When this way is pursued, businesses are rewarded for pleasing consumers, and only for pleasing consumers.

The second, and very different, way for government to be pro-business is to bestow favors and privileges on politically connected firms.  These favors and privileges, such as tariffs and export subsidies, invariably oblige consumers to pay more – either directly in the form of higher prices, or indirectly in the form of higher taxes – for goods and services.  This way of being pro-business reduces the nation’s prosperity by relieving businesses of the need to satisfy consumers.  When this second way is pursued, businesses are rewarded for pleasing politicians.  Competition for consumers’ dollars is replaced by competition for political favors.

The fact that more than 200 American business executives are in India with the President is cause to fear that any pro-business policies he might adopt will be of the second, impoverishing sort.

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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. …