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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.) …