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What the GOP Landslide Means for America

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by Terry Paulson

P. J. O’Rourke said it best, “This is not just about an election – It’s going to be a RESTRAINING ORDER!” Just what does the Republican landslide mean to America, to Washington politics, and to you?

Elections have consequences. Voters make choices. But a campaign is like dating—it’s the sales phase of the relationship. Once an election is over, citizens are watching to see how candidates live up to the promises they’ve made. Will the “love” and “trust” be earned and re-earned month after month?

This vote was more a rejection of President Obama’s changes and failure to right the economy than it was an endorsement of the Republican Party. The last time Republicans were in control of Congress, they spent more than the Democrats in the previous administration. America will be watching to see if Republicans have learned their lesson and have the backbone to live the principles they so frequently espouse.

The media will harp on the importance of “getting along” and working together to find “non-partisan” solutions. President Obama will call for compromise, but you’ve promised those who voted for you smaller government, lower taxes and a return to the Constitutional principles. Compromise on these promises is not what America needs or voters expect.

Continue reading . . .

Change and Hope

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by Ken Connor

The results are in, and in the words of former President George W. Bush, it was a thumping.  What this nation witnessed on November 2nd was not merely a wave election, it was a tsunami.  The obvious beneficiary of the voter’s frustration this time around was the GOP, but as many have emphasized, it would be a huge mistake to interpret the outcome of this election as a mandate for the Republican establishment to carry on with business as usual.

As I cast my ballot on Election Day, it was difficult to shake feelings of trepidation and cynicism, despite the energy that has animated my fellow conservatives in the past several months.  According to a new poll, I wasn’t alone.  A record 75% of voters surveyed prior to the midterm elections feel that things are not going well in America.  Now that the suspense is over and the dust has settled, many questions remain.  Is the uncertainty and doubt that has characterized the mood of the American people something that the new crop of reformers can overcome?  Are these newly elected agents of the people ready to do the work, take the chances, and make the sacrifices necessary to bring about real change in the way our government does its business?  Will the American people’s vote of confidence be rewarded, or betrayed?

In the immediate aftermath of an election, it’s difficult to tell whether or not the campaign pledges that landed a winning candidate in office will go on to guide their service, or be left on the cutting room floor.  For the next couple of months, the winning candidates will bask in their victory and recover from the rigors of the campaign trail.  But come January, the American people will be anxious to see if their representatives meant what they said.

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GOP Poised to Reap Redistricting Rewards

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by Michael Barone

Let’s try to put some metrics on last Tuesday’s historic election. Two years ago, the popular vote for the House of Representatives was 54 percent Democratic and 43 percent Republican. That may sound close, but in historic perspective it’s a landslide. Democrats didn’t win the House popular vote in the South, as they did from the 1870s up through 1992. But they won a larger percentage in the 36 non-Southern states than — well, as far as I can tell, than ever before.

This year we don’t yet know the House popular vote down to the last digit, partly because California takes five weeks these days to count all its votes (Brazil, which voted last Sunday, counted its votes in less than five hours). But the exit poll had it at 52 percent Republican and 46 percent Democratic, which is probably within a point or so of the final number.

That’s similar to 1994, and you have to go back to 1946 and 1928 to find years when Republicans did better. And the numbers those years aren’t commensurate since the then-segregated and Democratic South cast few popular votes. So you could argue that this is the best Republican showing ever.

Nationally, Republicans narrowly missed winning Senate seats in heavily Democratic Washington and in Nevada and California, where less problematic nominees might have won. As in all wave years, they missed winning half a dozen House seats by a whisker (or a suddenly discovered bunch of ballots).

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Daily Dose

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“The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.” – James Madison

Proverbs 15:29 – The Lord is far from the wicked: but he heareth the prayer of the righteous.

On this day in history:

In 1889, Montana became the 41st state.

A Return to the Norm

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by Charles Krauthammer

 For all the turmoil, the spectacle, the churning — for all the old bulls slain and fuzzy-cheeked freshmen born — the great Republican wave of 2010 is simply a return to the norm. The tide had gone out; the tide came back. A center-right country restores the normal congressional map: a sea of interior red, bordered by blue coasts and dotted by blue islands of ethnic/urban density.
    
Or to put it numerically, the Republican wave of 2010 did little more than undo the two-stage Democratic wave of 2006-2008 in which the Democrats gained 54 House seats combined (precisely the size of the anti-Democratic wave of 1994). In 2010 the Democrats gave it all back, plus about an extra 10 seats or so for good — chastening — measure.
    
The conventional wisdom is that these sweeps represent something novel, exotic and very modern — the new media, faster news cycles, Internet frenzy and a public with a short attention span and even less patience with government. Or alternatively, that these violent swings reflect reduced party loyalty and more independent voters.

Nonsense. In 1946, for example, when party loyalty was much stronger and even television was largely unknown, the Republicans gained 56 seats and then lost 75 in the very next election. Waves come. Waves go. The republic endures.

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Daily Dose

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“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.” – Calvin Coolidge

Proverbs 10:4 – He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.

On this day in history:

In 1889, the citizens of Wyoming approve the first state constitution granting full voting rights to women.

Oklahoma Bans Sharia Law

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by Connie Hair

Voters have passed an amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution to ban the use of Islamic Sharia law in the state courts by an overwhelming 70% of the vote.  The amendment also bars judges from using foreign law in rendering decisions.

Seen as a pre-emptive strike, Oklahoma now joins Louisiana in blocking Sharia law, a draconian legal doctrine that does not recognize the most basic human rights as measured by any Western standard.

As previously reported on HUMAN EVENTS, free speech rights are under assault worldwide through violence, threats of violence, and Sharia-compliant “incitement” laws.

Continue reading . . .

Obama and the Democrat Freefall

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by Michelle Malkin

Take Your Olive Branch and Shove It, Democrats

On the eve of a historic midterm election upheaval, President Barack Obama tried to walk back his gratuitous slap at Americans who oppose his radical progressive agenda. “I probably should have used the word ‘opponents’ instead of ‘enemies’ to describe political adversaries,” Obama admitted Monday. “Probably”?

Here is an ironclad certainty: It’s too little too late for the antagonist-in-chief to paper over two years of relentless Democratic incivility and hate toward his domestic “enemies.” Voters have spoken: They’ve had enough. Enough of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s rhetorical abuse. Enough of his feints at bipartisanship. Whatever the final tally, this week’s turnover in Congress is a GOP mandate for legislative pugilism, not peace. Voters have had enough of big government meddlers “getting things done.” They are sending fresh blood to the nation’s Capitol to get things undone.

Just two short years ago, Obama campaigned as the transcendent unifier. “Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states,” he proclaimed. “We have been and always will be the United States of America.”

It’s been an Us vs. Them freefall ever since.

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We’re All Bigots Now

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by Ann Coulter

After Tuesday’s election, the fresh new faces of the Democratic Party are … Harry Reid and Jerry Brown! (Who had the worst election night? Chuck Schumer, who’s been waiting in the wings to replace Reid as Senate majority leader. Who had the second worst election night? The people who live below Barney Frank’s apartment.)

With the addition of new Republican senators Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Marco Rubio (Florida) — among others — the average IQ of Senate Republicans has just increased by about 20 points. Also, liberals won’t have Sharron Angle to kick around anymore. Now that Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina are gone, Keith Olbermann is indefinitely suspending his “Worst Persons of the World” segment.

Republicans added two magnificent new black faces to the Congress with Allen West in Florida, who beat sore loser Ron Klein 54.3 percent to 45.7 percent (with 97 percent counted, Klein wouldn’t concede), and Tim Scott in South Carolina, who crushed Democrat Ben Frasier, 65-29.

Republicans also launched two new Hispanic stars this election: Sen.-elect Marco Rubio from Florida and the new governor of New Mexico, Susanna Martinez. And we got a bonus Sikh — Nikki Haley, the new governor of South Carolina. MSNBC is still searching for the “Republicans are racist” angle in all of this.

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Daily Dose

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“Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.” – Thomas Jefferson

Isaiah 41:10 – Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, O will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of the righteousness.

On this day in history:

In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter to become the 40th President of the United States.