Redstate

but conservative America is still going very strong. Brilliant post by Tim Chapman. I have to say that after the slight post-election hangover wednesday morning, I feel just as optimistic as always that our future is very bright indeed.

Rush is right: it's the liberals who are pessimists. We believe in a great future of a great nation.

God Bless America

www.thearmchairpolitician.com

is that the wave was greatest in the North-East and Mid-West. Different areas of the country are showing more distinct political differences.

Each part of the country has different values. Not every state will be a Georgia. You need liberal Republicans to have a majority and in order to pass conservative ideas you need the majority.

Well, obviously, one data point does not make a trend, so it is going to be until at least 2008 and probably 2010 until we see whether this election was really only about Iraq/corruption or whether it was a more general rejection of Republican government.

That said, if this election was about Republican government (and that is still a big if), then I fail to see how a bunch of liberal Republicans losing is anything but bad for the Republican party. If the country is legitimately starting to drift back to the left, then obviously, the first to go are going to be the moderates. Moderate Republican seats are going to switch to moderate Democratic seats long before there is any impact on more radical Republicans.

As HoosierLife said, if you aren't in the majority, no work is getting done on your agenda, no matter how conservative the seats you actually have are.

It's not defeated. If Republicans would have been conservative over the past years we would have won on Tuesday, and hands down.

The borders should have been secured and illegals rounded up.

The Medicare Supplement should never have been passed.

Tax cuts across the board should have been made permanent.

The gloves should have been taken off in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We should remember that bipartisan means the democrats side will be taken.

The Republicans were too busy trying to allow everyone and their beliefs under the tent. We need to define our beliefs and stick to them. If you don't agree with us then we'll find somebody else.

Lastly, Ronald Reagan should be our example of what a Conservative is. PERIOD!

Don
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Democratic is a process.
Democrat is what they are.
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Fred Barnes wrote that Congressional Republicans would have fared much better had they acted on Social Security.

There is a compelling logic to this. The politics of Social Security are most dangerous prior to a vote, rather than afterwards. After a vote, all of the scare tactics are disproved, but prior to it, they're very difficult to swat away with any finality.

Ramesh Ponnuru also had an outstanding recent piece on the broader situation in Social Security, covering political and substantive implications.

Perhaps moderates were ‘moderate’ because they come from districts with truly conservative voters. Since they chose to be identified with a republican party which is no longer conservative, fiscally or intrusively, their conservative constituents threw them out. Conservatism has traditionally been about fiscal conservatism and non-intrusion into private lives.

A true conservative would not have gotten involved in Terri Shiavo’s family business. Nor would a true conservative be fiscally unsound as the republican party has been.

So, in districts where constituents have true conservative values: keep out of my private life and don’t overspend on pork and give no-bid contracts to companies you used to work for, the republican candidates were, perhaps at a slightly higher number, voted down.

In districts where constituents vote based on ideals that include intrusion into your neighbor’s life and fear, which are not conservative values, the republican incumbant kept his/her seat. This is what went on.

Also, from the list posted on Chapman's blog the difference between the number seats that by his definition were conservative and lost versus the number of moderates that lost is only two. And if you include Santorum and Allen in the conservative list, they are even. The list also didn’t mention OH-2, Jean Schmidt which is still in play with some 12,000 absentee ballots to count.

So he is correct in a sense, what lost was not conservatism, but radicalism. Radical intrusion into private lives, radical racist biting, radical spending, radical favoritism. It was the 'moderate' voter who was able to see past predjudice and fear and vote rationally to remove those representatives of a republican party which has become the antithesis of conservatism.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
James Madison

In the numbing aftermath of loss in the recent elections, I have come away with one tingling sense of pride.
Unlike the liberal ninnies, who are still seething over (and seeking revenge for) their loss back in 2000, Conservatives have, in our defeat, demonstrated what it means to accept the voice of the people.
Where Liberals scream fraud, stolen election and voter disenfranchisement, Conservatives are willing to face even the ugliest of their own truths, embrace them and, rather than blame their faults on others we use our energy to think of ways to fix them.
You don’t hear of Conservatives throwing tantrums, seeking grief counseling, threatening to leave the country or to commit suicide now that Palosi will be armed with a gavel.
Yes, I am proud we’re not like them.

We accept responsibility for our choices and the consequences that follow.
We examine ourselves, not those who defeated us, and we discuss amongst ourselves how we might do better.
No… Loss isn’t easy.
They didn’t like it… We don’t like it.
But... we face it with dignity.

"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."

In many cases he simply slapped a label of “liberal” or “conservative” on defeated candidates without much (or any) explanation.

One thing about Congressman Gil Gutknecht from the 1CD of MN. Gutknecht was elected in 1994 and imposed a 12-year term limit on himself. The DFL chair remarked on election night that his district by not reelecting him to a 7th term was simply holding him to this 1994 pledge. I wonder how many others who were defeated Tuesday night also had term limit pledges and were trying to break them.

"Palosi"? I meant Pelosi!
Geeze I hate it when I can't spell.
And they let me drive.
Go figure.

"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."

What awful logic in that post. Of course it was mostly moderate/liberal Republicans who lost. Those are the ones who represent swing districts. However in CO-7 you had an open seat, a young attractive conservative right who used to work at a Republican think tank, and he lost by more than 10 points in a seat that had been redistricted two years earlier to be safer.

And what about Rick Santorum? He was better funded and up against a completely lackluser challanger. Ken Blackwell? JD HAYWORTH?!? (A very conservative incumbent running in a Republican area of suburban Phoenix.)

You could have said the same thing in 1994 and you'd be wrong then too. The Democrats who lost in 1994 in the House were disproportionately moderates. Rangel and Pelosi are not in district vulnerable to waves.

The problem with the type of Democrats you mention is that the overreact, with their mood swings going too far. However, there is a large group of conservatives who don't show enough emotion, or have enough passion.

This leads to the problem of republicans becoming happy losers year after year, never having enough passion to make the hard choices necessary to win. That's why the Republicans were in the House minority for 40 years straight, until Newt Gringrich broke the Republican mold by daring to act up, raise hell, and fight back enough to win, instead of being a cheerful loser.

That's also why the media (and trolls) are pushing us so hard to be "bipartisan", because they want us to fall asleep in the traditional republican way. Their biggest fear is that we'll treat them the way they treated us, and fight as hard to get back in power as they did.