Republicans thundered into the majority in the House of Representatives Tuesday night, making historic gains by a proportion not seen in more than 70 years.

The party so far has won more than 60 seats, with about 65 net gains projected by the time all ballots are counted -- far more than the party needed to seize the majority. Democrats, with the help of a victory by Majority Leader Harry Reid, held the Senate by a narrow margin but suffered several big losses in an election that just about put Republicans on equal footing with the president's party.

House Republican Leader John Boehner, speaking briefly to reporters Wednesday morning alongside his deputy, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., claimed a "mandate" to cut the size of government and urged President Obama to respect the will of the voters and "change course."

Continue reading at www.foxnews.com.

The Republicans won the House, the Democrats kept the Senate, and the GOP won the tiebreaker, capturing a majority of the nation’s governor mansions.

Republicans on Tuesday wrested control of at least 10 statehouses from Democrats as they rode an anti-incumbent wave that will give them more than 30 governorships.

Democrats controlled 26 of the 50 statehouses before Tuesday's election, and Republicans needed to win 20 of the 37 contests to seize a majority. They won in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Tennessee, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wisconsin -- all of which currently are run by Democrats.

Continue reading at www.foxnews.com.

What should it be? My suggestion is: not repeal of Obamacare, nor extension of tax cuts. Those can come soon enough. The very first piece of legislation to come before the new House should be the Enumerated Powers Act. As explained in a Heritage memo:

The Act would require all legislation introduced in Congress to contain a concise explanation of the constitutional authority empowering Congress to enact it.Failure to comply would make a bill subject to a point of order, a procedural device to delay consideration until the problem is corrected or the objection overruled.

Why? Unlike Obamacare and taxes, this is a quick win. It doesn’t require lengthy negotiations and the Democrats can’t even try to spin this as some evil corporate plot. Passage of the Act would send a strong message to the Tea Party, and it keeps faith with one of the core promises in the Pledge to America. It’ll fly through the House and immediately put Reid and Obama on the defensive. If they oppose it, it looks terrible. If they support it, then they have conceded one of the major planks of the GOP argument – that government ought to be constitutional. Then the GOP can move to the other items of their agenda saying “even Reid and Obama agree that all federal laws have to be grounded in the Constitution …”

Now that the GOP has control of the House, expect them to start issuing subpoenas against the White House. The Daily Beast notes:

One of the biggest consequences of the 1994 Republican Revolution was the wave of investigations the new GOP majority carried out against the White House, culminating in President Clinton's impeachment. Now that the 2010 midterm elections are over, many Democrats and progressive commentators are concerned the same fate will befall President Obama, given the intensity of conservative loathing for his administration. Here are five areas where investigations are likely.

Those 5 areas are: the Joe Sestak deal, the new Black Panther Party, the BP spill, the czars, and the inspector general.

What did The Daily Beast miss? And what should the House leaders target first in their investigations?

My pick: the czars.

Out here in California, I've had to cheer up some friends who couldn't see past the whole Brown/Boxer fiasco to the bigger picture, but me, I'm feeling like this is just the beginning of something beautiful and there would be a spring in my step if, you know, I allowed that sort of thing.

An observation, though. Last night, on Fox, Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin came on to say a bunch of meaningless stuff about women... and I thought Ferraro cleaned Sarah's clock. I understand Ferraro is a figure of respect for feminists and that she's ailing, but she sat there endlessly spewing the spinniest garbage about how the tea party had been turned back and people had voted locally and Obamacare was a wonderful thing... and Palin just sat there and let her do it. Maybe she was just being respectful, but it was embarrassing and reinforced my sense that Palin may be a wonderful speaker and a moving iconic figure, but she is not someone equipped for governance. She's our Obama, as it were.

It was very exciting to see the GOP retake the House last night. But I confess to feeling some post-congressional tristesse when I awoke to find that the Democrats had swept all the statewide races in New York.

And yet, and yet, maybe things aren’t so bad. If I’m reading the returns correctly, Republicans have captured five House seats in New York, including one right here in NY City (Staten Island). As for Cuomo, he had the good luck to run against the self-imploding Carl Paladino. But Cuomo read the mood of the electorate and did not promote a single liberal idea. Instead he promoted himself as a tax-cutter and budget-balancer.

The results suggest that the GOP can be competitive statewide if they field decent candidates. Oh, and in one sense it’s just as well that Reid won in Nevada, since that keeps Schumer from taking over. If the Democrats are going to retain the Senate, then I’d rather that their public face be the hapless, bumbling Harry Reid. That’s one man’s spin from Gotham. Over to you, California.

In the House, I'd say so. In the Senate, seems not.

Newt Gingrich told The Daily Caller that yesterday's midterm election results were more significant than the GOP's historical takeover of Congress in 1994:

The 2010 midterm elections could be more important historically than the Republican takeover of Congress 16 years ago, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the party’s sweep into power in 1994.

“It’s bigger than 1994,” Gingrich told The Daily Caller shortly after it was projected that the GOP would assume a majority in the House late Tuesday night. “It’s a more decisive repudiation. I think the total number of seats will be bigger. I think the governorships are bigger. I think the state legislature, things like losing North Carolina for the first time since 1898. That has to be seen as historic.”

Republicans won 54 seats in the 1994 election, a record the party is projected to break after all votes are counted.

The New York Times reports that yesterday, "Republicans won at least 58 seats, not including those from some Western states where ballots were still being counted, surpassing the 52 seats the party won in the sweep of 1994."

As for the Senate, the numbers seem to fall short of 1994. In 1994, Republicans took control of the Senate after picking up eight seats. This year, Republicans have picked up at least 6 seats, but will not gain a majority. Jay Cost at The Weekly Standard provides this analysis:

For the Republicans, tonight represents not so much a new governing majority but an opportunity to build a majority. Republicans should look very carefully at their problems in the Senate races, where gains of upwards of 9 look to have been reduced to just 6 or 7. Republicans need to recognize that while conservative principles can win in America, they require candidates with broad appeal. Clearly, Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, and Christine O'Donnell are not these kinds of candidates.The goal of the Republican party in the next two years should be to articulate the conservative case with an eye to persuading as many voters as possible. After all, that is how change really happens in the United States -- it comes through building a broad political coalition that stretches all across the country.

Cost concludes, "Conservative principles have won such broad mandates before -- in 1896 and 1900, in 1924, in 1980 and 1984 -- and that should be the goal of the Republican party moving forward."

Has anyone seen a good, in-depth analysis of what happened in Nevada? As far as I can tell, every other competitive race ended up within the range of what at least some poll had predicted within the past month or two. But I can't find any evidence that anyone at any time predicted Reid with a 5-point win. Was turnout in Las Vegas that much higher than expected? Did the union goons just do that good a job? Did Angle say something dumb in the last day or two? Or is there any substance to the sporadic reports of voting irregularities that trickled out of Nevada over the past day or two? Across all the races, the fact that this one wasn't even that close was, for me, the biggest surprise.

First of all, mazeltov, y'all!

It's pretty quiet over here about the results, at least so far. A Republican House will influence Obama to alter his Mideast policy in Israel's favor. Unless it doesn't.

As Aluf Benn points out in Haaretz, both Obama and Netanyahu have some big decisions to make in the next year: what to do about the establishment of a Palestinian state and how to stop Iran's nuclear program. Benn suggests rather breezily that Obama might green-light an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran in exchange for Israeli agreement on the Palestine question. That's a heck of a quid pro quo, but as worthy of speculation as any other theory (i.e., no one knows the real calculations). No one's committing yet on the odds that a Republican House will make it more likely.

We should get a sense of the direction of things soon enough. In the meantime, enjoy the victory!

A Facebook friend just asked for my thoughts on the election given my unique perspective from Turkey. This kind of cracked me up, because what this looked like from Turkey was mostly a blank screen in the middle of the night. I don't have access to US television here, and for some reason my computer chose this night to decide that it didn't feel like handling anything complicated. The local radio stations are not giving up-to-the-minute precinct results, to put it mildly. So, basically, I'm just now figuring out what happened. No one in Turkey's awake yet, and when they do wake up, I can pretty much guarantee they'll just find the whole business mystifying.

However, I'll bet no one in the US noticed this news from my time zone, given the excitement, and it's huge: Britain and France have signed unprecedented military cooperation treaties.

The pacts, announced at a summit conference in London between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, represents a new effort by Europe's two nuclear nations to set aside long-standing differences and pool resources to ensure that the need for drastic budget cutting does not jeopardize their standing in the military big leagues.

Anyway, this is pretty much what things look like from Turkey, literally and figuratively.

Rob Long
November 3, 2010

Tonight -- or last night, depending on when you see this -- we tried a little experiment. We live-blogged, with everyone who wanted, the midterm elections.

From my perspective, it was a great success. But what do you think? Should we do more of them? Any adjustments you'd like us to make?

Ricochet's friend Jennifer Rubin writes that her son Josh was so thrilled by the day's developments that he cooked a meal to celebrate--a red meal. Braised cabbage, grilled salmon and tomato tortilla soup with elephant shaped crouton. While the Rubins feast for real, let us all least feast our eyes.

IMG00041-20101102-1928
“‘Fatwa?’ Rush Limbaugh is really fat, wha?”

I'm was disturbed to see that Jon Stewart basically blew off Salman Rushdie when the latter called to protest Stewart's booking Yusuf Islam (a/k/a Cat Stevens, né Steven Georgiou) who famously called for Rushdie's execution for blasphemy. I was even surprised. I figured Rushdie's greater celebrity (at least among those who, you know, read) would have triggered Stewart's suck-up reflex.

Rushdie writes to a British journalist:

I spoke to Jon Stewart about Yusuf Islam's appearance. He said he was sorry it upset me, but really, it was plain that he was fine with it. Depressing.

Depressing is right. I see two possible reasons for Stewart's insousciance.

Theory One: Yusuf here is just Stewart's stand-in for Muslims generally, and Stewart's flaunting his alleged "tolerance" of Islam in contrast to his evil opponents. Ex-Cat is a token, and Muslims are mascots Stewart's using to ostentatiously demonstrate his moral superiority to the bad guys. "Dude, yeah, but, I mean, Christine O’Donnell! Am I right?" (Looks for APPLAUSE sign.)

Theory Two: Stewart's been smoking his sycophantic press clippings, and he's stoned to the point he can't see he's done something wrong. "Hey, I know he wanted you dead, but my rally man, it's really important. I mean, yeah, he said some crazy things years ago, but Fox gives Glenn Beck an hour every night! What's up with that?" (Mugs to his writers.)

Thing is, Steve Georgiou, or whatever he's calling himself these days, repeatedly called for Rushdie's death (and lies about it now) and has apparently told a reporter that he favors stoning women in cases of adultery. He famously abjured music (for a while) as un-Islamic. Which is to say he's got all the hallmarks of a Wahhabi-style extremist, not the kind of Berlinskian Moderate Muslim one would assume Stewart would want to be defending against anti-Muslim bigotry. Rushdie put it best:

If he's a "good Muslim" like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar then I'm the Great Pumpkin.

And yet…it doesn't seem to matter. "Hey, we all know that movements have murderous extremists on their fringes…but enough about the Republicans!"

Or do I have it the wrong way around? What do you think? Why would Jon Stewart, soi-disant standard bearer of Civility and Sanity, take the side of the un-civil, insane guy here?

Peter Robinson
November 2, 2010

Our friend Jim Geraghty, writing over at NRO's "Campaign Spot":

I don’t have the exits, but folks I know in the media and political worlds are getting their first glimpses....I am told that one Democratic strategist, helping a television network with Election Night analyssis, just declared that the Democrats were experiencing something on par with mass murder.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani the woman who originally was to be stoned for adultery, now will just be executed...by which means we don't know. Isn't that kind of Iran. I wonder if these (expletive) decided that election day in the US was a good day to slip this one by us. Or was it the thank you note for the Tweeted happy birthday to Ahmadinejad? Let's hope today is the first step in bringing this current administration down. I'm sickened by their "human rights" stance.

To counter Ursula's post from earlier today . . . Do you remember that captivating DipDive video from 2008 with attractive celebrities talking about how the world would change under Obama?

It's been remixed. I've watched it about five times already today, laughing out loud each time.

Bristol Palin and Mark Ballas

Resolved: In terms of blending television technology, skills, and entertainment, Dancing With The Stars represents the pinnacle of the medium. I started watching it as a joke so I could pretend I was into it for my radio show, but I became hooked during season 2. Season 10 brings us Bristol Palin, who is adorable and normal, and caused me to actually vote for only the second time since watching this show.

As of last night, real America has kept Bristol alive while kicking the hideous "Situation" to the curb weeks ago.

Obama Throw

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, even though the Giants gave President Obama's staff several phone numbers to call, the President cold-shouldered the World Series Champs. Elitist indifference to our national pastime.

Or maybe he's still fuming at Baseball over all that criticism he took for throwing namby-pamby.

I don't care where he was born. President Obama lacks an American aesthetic.

Until the end of the day, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi will continue to focus his attentions on getting Republican governors elected across the country.

But tomorrow? Tomorrow, Ricochet's own Haley Barbour begins contemplating a 2012 presidential bid. POLITICO reports:

Barbour made clear...that a potential presidential run is on his mind, laying out how he’ll ultimately make the decision on running.

“I’m gonna sit down after [Tuesday] and see if there’s anything to think about,” he said. “But I don't feel any time pressure over the next few weeks or months. We’ll see if Marsha [his wife] thinks it’s a good idea and whether others think it’s a good idea.”

Here is an appropriate reply to the video I posted below. Enjoy.

Deep in their hearts, what do liberals think regarding their fellow Americans? Here, in short order, ladies and gentlemen, is the answer -- and I think that we conservatives owe our left-liberal adversaries a vote of thanks for making their position so clear.

Over at the blog of the Legal Times, we learn that election lawyers are bracing themselves for the aftermath of election day.

Washington lawyers who specialize in election law are bracing for recounts, complaints and other aftermath expected from the midterm elections on Tuesday.

Many law firms are working with familiar clients — Perkins Coie, for example, continues to represent the establishment of the Democratic Party, and the firm’s lawyers have already filed some complaints. Others are mounting defenses for newly formed nonprofit groups, such as American Crossroads. Holtzman Vogel partner Thomas Josefiak has been publicly representing that organization, which is spending millions of dollars on behalf of Republican candidates.

One question on the minds of election lawyers is whether there will be an unusually high number of contested results this year, given how close many races are and the fact that control of Congress is up in the air.

Of course, there will be hundreds of individual contested elections decided on election day. By the law of large numbers, many of these will be close contests, often so close that recounts will be required as a matter of state law. But after the recount, litigation comes only if one side wants it.

At this point the story has less to do with elections and more to do with the economics of litigation. Clearly what matters on that view is the cost of litigation relative to the stakes of litigation. Parties decide how much to invest based on what they hope to achieve, given the probability of success.

In cases where the candidates are close to the center, the prediction is that getting your candidate over the top counts for less than it does when the two candidates are far apart politically. The prediction is therefore that in those elections that pit Democratic orthodoxy against Republican tea partiers—think Harry Reid and Sharron Angle—a close outcome will provoke litigation. There are a lot of contests of that type right now, so expect to see more litigation than usual.

And how will that litigation be conducted? One of the dreadful charms of this field is that all local laws are different in detail, but share an extraordinary complexity. The issue is still more complex because it always has a constitutional overlay. There will be no Bush v. Gores coming out of a midterm election. But there could be lots of other legal action, for no matter how big the Republicans sweep, there will always be some close contests.

This is the most effective ad in the Brown-Whitman campaign I have seen. The fact that this, according to the polls, hasn't been able to turn people around here is testament to just how moon-batty this state is...and how unimpressive a candidate Meg Whitman is.

My crazy idea that only France can lead Europe into a future worth having seems a little less crazy today. Today Britain, tomorrow the Continent?

Leave it to the New York Times. Though major pollsters and pundits from all sides of the political spectrum predict Republicans will in all likelihood take the House today, the New York Times' Nate Silver says that all is not lost for Democrats. In fact, there are "5 Reasons Democrats Could Beat the Polls and Hold the House." (Via Hot Air.)

Here is the Democrats' rosy scenario as Silver pictures it:

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when in the night things started to go wrong. But at some point, a trash can was knocked over in John A. Boehner’s office in the Longworth House Office Building. A half-hour later, a hole was punched in the wall at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters.

Republicans didn’t really have much reason to be upset. They were going to pick up somewhere between 29 and 34 House seats from Democrats, pending the outcome of a recount or two and the receipt of mail ballots in some Western states. They gained five Senate seats from Democrats, and won the governorships in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida, among many other states. It had been a wave election, indeed — but a wave on the magnitude of 2006, rather than 1994.

For most of the evening, Republicans had still seemed quite likely to pick up the House, perhaps by some margin. Exit polls that (erroneously, it turned out) suggested a nine-point generic ballot win for the party colored the early coverage.

Silver then goes on to explain how Republicans might lose most of the races that they will probably win:

A scenario like this one is possible tomorrow — not particularly likely, but possible — just as a 77-seat Republican gain is possible. It’s probably a somewhat greater possibility than people realize.

(In fairness, on Sunday, Silver published a similar piece, but speculating about how Republicans could do much better than expected today.)

Over at Politics Daily, Patricia Murphy is more sober in her analysis of how the Dems will do:

The outlook for Democrats on Election Day has gotten so bad that estimates of the mayhem require metaphors only Mother Nature can supply. Will it be a wave or a tsunami? An early winter storm or a Category Five hurricane?

On Tuesday night, electoral math will decide which party controls each chamber. Republicans will need a net total of 39 pick-ups to take back control of the House and install John Boehner as speaker.

But the numbers will only tell part of the story for the next Congress. The rest will be revealed by the following four trends, personified by 10 races, that will determine the future for Democrats struggling to keep their power. If Democrats cannot limit their losses among their newest members, their most powerful members, those in the South, and among their record-breaking female contingent -- they can expect a blowout defeat Tuesday whose effects could last a decade or longer.

In other words, Dems will lose big--the question is just how big.

I have done it. I voted this morning shortly after 8 a.m., and my wife did so shortly after 9. I was the 56th to vote in our ward; she was the 105th. The old folks who man the tables told me that the turnout was not bad but that it did not compare with that in the general election two years ago. This is pretty much what I expected. I would be surprised if the turnout of registered voters nationwide exceeds 40%. Since 1974, when the eighteen-year olds got the vote, it has never passed that mark in midterm elections.

There is no Senate race in Michigan this year, alas. But the House race here in Michigan-7 is hotly contested. Democrat Mark Schauer, who holds the seat, is up against Republican Tim Walberg – from whom he took it two years ago. It has been a spirited race.

I do not own a working television. We have an old dinosaur, which we use solely for watching rented movies. I want my children to read and read and read – which the two who are older than four do to a gratifying extent. So, I have not seen most of the candidates’ television spots. The material that has come in the mail, however, has been massive; and virtually every time that I go online I stumble across an advertisement targeted on people living in this district.

There seem to be only two issues discussed. Each candidate accuses the other of ruining or wanting to ruin Social Security, and each accuses the other of sending jobs abroad. It is as if no one lives here any more except those who are retired or are out of work.

Something of the sort may, in fact, be the case. Until Nevada caught up with us this year or last, Michigan led the nation in unemployment, and when people start gambling again we will no doubt regain our rightful place in the lead and continue to hold it for a good long time. The automobile industry is not what it was, and I would not bet on Chrysler and Government Motors being around in 2020. Moreover, between 2000 and 2008, the population in Michigan reportedly dropped by 10%. I shudder to think what the 2010 census will show. Here in Hillsdale, over the last decade, seven of the eight small factories that produced parts for the automobile industry have closed their doors. Hillsdale College is now the principal employer in Hillsdale County, and the county has the highest unemployment rate in the state.

Neither Schauer nor Walberg can honestly be blamed for the disappearance of the jobs, but the party to which Schauer belongs has been closely associated in this state with the United Auto Workers – which has contributed more than any other group to the decline of the American automobile industry. Whether this is widely acknowledged in this largely blue-collar district I have no idea.

On the entitlements front, Schauer has to face up to the fact that Obamacare, for which he voted, involves not only raiding the funds supposedly dedicated to Medicare but eliminating as an option Medicare Advantage. On that same front, Walberg deserves praise for pointing out that Social Security in its present form is unsustainable.

In the past, Social Security and Medicare have been sticks with which the Democrats have been able to beat the Republicans. This year, I doubt whether this will work. To enact their agenda, the Democrats had to stiff the elderly – a constituency on which they have relied for more than seventy years. Those under thirty may vote on impulse and emotion. For them, the empty slogan “Yes, we can!” may well have appeal. The elderly are a bit more sober. Experience has taught them that there are things that we cannot do. Moreover, they have learned in the school of hard knocks to calculate their interests with care, and many of them also think hard about the prospects likely to be faced by their children and grandchildren.

My bet is that Walberg wins handily. With regard to entitlements, the Democrats look more and more like the little boy who cried, “Wolf!” Those who play tricks like this too often are asking that their pleas be ignored. That was my reaction to the well-made advertisement that Ursula just posted.

My country is about to do the most amazing thing my country does--transfer power peacefully, in free, fair elections. Both as a journalist and as a US citizen, I wish I were there today. I'd like to wander around and talk to people. I wish I could see this for myself. But I can't.

Share your best photos from the day with me, would you? Local-color stories? Snippets of overheard conversation?

One of Drudge's top headlines on this beautiful day tells us to "Expect Acrimony and Gridlock" in the aftermath of today's elections. The headlined article, which is from the Telegraph, concludes:

Washington will be largely divided between advocates of two competing and fiercely-held notions about the role of government. After today, and with the 2012 presidential election campaign approaching, expect acrimony and gridlock in Washington.

Paired with the word "acrimony," gridlock sounds like a rather bad fate, doesn't it?

But George Will has another take on it.

Will has always been one of my favorite conservative pundits. Whenever I watch him on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, I'm unfailingly struck by how thoroughly he outclasses his fellow panelists. He floats above the partisan squabbling and delivers wise and fresh insights on the political landscape.

A few days ago on This Week, he managed to pack a history lesson, a government lesson, and a political lesson about "gridlock" into less than thirty seconds of talk:

AMANPOUR: George, Senator Cornyn pretty much told us that they didn't expect to win the Senate. Made some news here.

WILL: Doesn't matter, though, because if Mitch McConnell has 48 senators, he will always have 41 senators for whatever he wants to have 41 for.

Let me just say this. The Republican Party is being told to be the party of no. No more stimulus spending. No cap-and-trade. No card check. None of this other stuff. Gridlock is not an American problem. It's an American achievement. The framers of our Constitution didn't want an efficient government; they wanted a safe government. To which end they filled it with slowing and blocking mechanisms. Three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajority, judicial review....What I'm saying...is that when we have gridlock, the system is working.

Brilliant.

I woke up this Election Day and checked Facebook. (Big mistake. Should have known better.)

This video is being posted as status by some of my Facebook friends. What do you think?

Blue Yeti
November 2, 2010
on-the-air-sign

Please join us tonight for our first live chat. We'll be using CoverItLive, which allows everyone -- contributors and members -- to participate. We're expecting many of our contributors and perhaps a few special guests to stop by throughout the evening. But what we're most excited about is opening up the floor to the Ricochet community to comment on the returns and report on what's happening in your neck of the woods in real time. It's something of an experiment, but we're hoping it will be more of conversation and less like this.

We'll be starting at 7PM Eastern time/4PM Pacific and plan to go all evening. Please stop by!

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