ROSS DOUTHAT: Was it worth it, Democrats? “Was the 111th Congress’s flurry of legislative activity worth the backlash it helped create? Were the health care bill and the stimulus worth handing John Boehner the gavel in the House of the Representatives? Did it make sense to push and push and then keep on pushing, even after the polls and town halls and special-election outcomes made it clear the voters were going to push back?”
Roger Kimball: They Just Don’t Get It. Related thoughts here.
NICK SCHULZ: Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other liberals dismissed the Tea Party as nothing more than “AstroTurf”? See, if they’d been following InstaPundit they would have known better. . . .
BREAKING: Sink Concedes, GOP Sweeps Florida.
PAUL HSIEH: GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You. “Celebrate Tuesday’s election results, but don’t forget who put you in office and why — namely, the independent-minded Tea Party voters.”
Related: Don’t Get Cocky.
CHANGE: After electoral drubbing, Democrats must now deal with ethics trials. “Fresh from a stinging midterm election defeat, House Democrats must quickly face another embarrassing spectacle: public trials for two of their most prominent members.”
IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Jim Demint offers advice to the newly elected. “Remember what the voters back home want—less government and more freedom.”
Read the whole thing. And the newly-elected might also want to peruse Taegan Goddard’s (of Political Wire) handbook, appropriately entitled You Won, Now What?
J.P. FREIRE: “Violent,” “angry,” “fear-mongering” Tea Party narrative debunked in one night.
Allegedly, the Tea Party movement has been violent, angry, intent to incite fear and hate among the populace. These narratives weren’t true — tonight’s vote has proven them caricatures laid out by journalists with short wordcounts and shorter attention spans.
Violent movements do not do these things. They don’t show up at the polls and overwhelm the establishment in favor of a minority candidate, as in the case of Sen.-elect Marco Rubio, R-Fla. They also don’t lose so badly, as in the case of Christine O’Donnell. They don’t take on, and nearly defeat, the leader of the majority party in the Senate, at the same time as he colludes with casinos in a potentially illegal scheme to get out the vote in his favor. They don’t settle for a more liberal candidate in Illinois just because he’s the most electable.
Yet they did all of those things. Strange.
Yep. Another failed narrative.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Now What? Plus, from the comments: “This is why strong spending restraint and granular appropriations are the key. California needs a bailout? Well gee, we already spent all the money on things people actually want, sorry.”
CHANGE: Bob Etheridge Loses And New Media Wins. Expect more of this.
THANKS TO ED DRISCOLL for joining in last night. With the help of time-zone arbitrage, we managed almost uninterrupted blogging!
JOHN PODHORETZ: No Time To Celebrate. “The election was indeed a referendum on Barack Obama. But the grant of power his opponents received last night is conditional, and will be hard to fulfill. No wonder nobody’s dancing.”
ANN ALTHOUSE: “Speaking of tired, it’s interesting that Harry Reid will be sticking around. There’s something so dreary about him. Does his victory cheer Democrats? Or would they have had more fun kicking Sharron Angle around?”
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: How the tea party helped GOP find a path to Election Day successes. “Concerns that the nascent tea party movement would hamper a return to relevancy for Republicans are quickly giving way as Election Day results suggest that in fact, the decentralized conservative protest movement helped give the GOP a roadmap to success.”
Well, I told you so.
HISTORIC GOP GAINS IN STATE LEGISLATURES: “Republicans haven’t enjoyed this much power in state capitals since the 1920s.”
MICHAEL BARONE: Some Random Thoughts On The 2010 Elections.
VIDEO: Allen West’s victory speech.
CHANGE: Higher Ed Needs the Creative Destruction of the Free Market. As the higher education bubble talk grows, we’ll be hearing more along these lines.
Except I don’t think that evacuating Saigon cost $200 million a day.
IT’S OFFICIAL: The Government Isn’t Getting Its Money Back Out of GM.
IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA.
THE TSUNAMI: “Republican gains are massive. And when I say Republican gains are massive, I mean tsunami,” Erick Erickson writes at Red State. “That, in and of itself, is significant. But that’s not the half of it. The real story is the underreported story of the night — the Republican pick ups at the state level.”
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