GOP primary race as of today

The GOP presidential primary picture has changed dramatically over the past few days. 
It looks like Romney, Bachmann and Perry to me.

Michael Barone on the consequences of the November 2010 elections:

It is a source of continuing fascination for me to watch the interaction between public opinion, as measured in polls and election results, and the actions of members of Congress, elected in one political environment and looking in most cases to be re-elected in one that may be quite different.
Eleven months ago, after the Massachusetts Senate election, I was convinced that Democrats could not jam their health care bill through because voters had so clearly demanded they not do so. But Pelosi proved more determined and resourceful than I had imagined, and found enough House Democrats who were willing to risk electoral defeat to achieve what Democrats proclaimed was an historic accomplishment.
Pelosi and Obama predicted that Obamacare would become more popular as voters learned more about it. Those predictions were based on the theory that in times of economic distress Americans would be more supportive of or amenable to big government policies.
That theory has been disproved about as conclusively as any theory can be in the real world, and most of the Democrats who provided the key votes for Obamacare were defeated on Election Day.
Democratic congressional leaders did take note of the unpopularity of their policies when they chose not to pass budget resolutions last spring. Presumably they did so because they would have had a hard time rounding up the votes for the high spending and large deficits that would have ensued.
But had the House and Senate passed a budget resolution, Democrats might have been able to pass their preferred tax policy, raising taxes on high earners, under the budget reconciliation process. So the House vote Thursday night was a delayed consequence of the public's long-apparent rejection of their policies.
Candidate Obama told Joe the Plumber that he wanted to "spread the wealth around." November's vote, presaged by more than a year of polls, was, as political scientist James Ceasar has written, "the Great Repudiation" of that policy.
Republicans, having succeeded in holding down tax rates, clearly have a mandate to hack away at spending and to defund and derail Obamacare, which is at or near new lows in the ABC/Washington Post and Rasmussen polls. And there does seem an opening, as Clinton White House staffer William Galston argues, for a 1986-style tax reform that eliminates tax preferences and cuts tax rates.
How effectively the 112th Congress will respond is unclear. But the outgoing 111th Congress, despite its big Democratic majorities, responded pretty clearly Thursday night.

Politico:

For Democrats in the South, the most ominous part of a disastrous year may not be what happened on Election Day but what has happened in the weeks since.
After suffering a historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further.

In Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama, Democratic state legislators have become Republicans, concluding that there is no future in the party that once dominated the so-called Solid South.

That the old Confederacy is shifting toward the GOP is, of course, nothing new. Southerners have been voting for Republican presidents, senators and governors for decades.
But what this year’s elections, and the subsequent party switching, have made unambiguously clear is that the last ramparts have fallen and political realignment has finally taken hold in one of the South’s last citadels of Democratic strength: the statehouses.
Protected by a potent mix of gerrymandering, pork, seniority and a friends-and-neighbors electorate, Democratic state representatives and senators managed to survive through the South’s GOP evolution — the Reagan years, the Republican landslide of 1994 and George W. Bush’s two terms. Yet scores of them retired or went down in defeat earlier this month. And at least 10 more across three states have changed parties since the elections, with rumors swirling through state capitols of more to come before legislative sessions commence in January. Facing the prospect of losing their seats through reapportionment — if not in the next election — others will surely choose flight over fight.
Democrats lost both chambers of the legislature this year in North Carolina and Alabama, meaning that they now control both houses of the capitol in just two Southern states, Arkansas and Mississippi, the latter of which could flip to the GOP in the next election.

FOX News All-Stars discuss what the 2010 election was all about, and they don't agree. My 2 cents is that it was about healthcare. That is what people don't like, and that was driving this election. But the economy was a factor also.

George Will, commenting on the recent election, nails it as usual: Americans rejected liberalism, which has become increasingly intrusive.

"These ideas," [economist Don] Boudreaux says, "are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives. These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else's contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments." Liberalism's ideas are "about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of 'Big Ideas' that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced by government, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people."
This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power - are government commands and controls - superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society's spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said "yes."

RealClearPolitics recalls this story:

Last January, retiring Arkansas Democratic Rep. Marion Berry told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that he worried about overconfidence in the White House regarding their prospects for avoiding a midterm election blowout.
"The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me,'" Berry said. "We're going to see how much difference that makes now."

Yes, now we see.

Michael Barone's thoughts on the election results.

Tsunami

It was a conservative reaction of a size not seen in decades. Blanche Lincoln lost. Tim Griffin won Arkansas' second district. Rick Crawford won in the first district. All of Bill Clinton's campaigning amounted to nothing. The next House will be controlled by the GOP and will toss out Pelosi. The Senate is almost evenly divided. Krauthammer says the Obama agenda is dead. He experimented with hyper-liberalism and the country said NO.

Ann Althouse: "It's so sad for the Democrats. They gave us so many things. Gifts. Expensive gifts. That we didn't want. That they bought with our money."

In Arkansas three constitutional offices went Republican: Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, and Commissioner of State Lands. Four of six Congressional seats were won by Republicans -- three House and one Senate. Mike Ross kept his seat because he woke up in time to vote against Obamacare. Republicans also did well in the legislature. We've seen nothing like this since Reconstruction.

Jason Tolbert sums up the night: Republicans won big.

Today is election day, the day we have either been waiting for or dreading. I'm ready for the election to be over one way or the other.

When I went to vote, I found the polling place almost deserted. Not many voters present. Last time I was there, it was crowded. Not sure what that means. Driving past it later, the number of cars seemed not to have changed much.

However, the early voting in Arkansas was heavy.

The Hil: Dems will have a blowout next week.

AP: Obama is already plotting his post-election presidency.

AP: Democrats are planning a Hail Mary bid with a $250 check for Seniors before the election. Well, great, but it won't change my vote.

Early voting began today in Arkansas. Needing to return some books, I went to a branch library and found long lines of people waiting to vote. I've never seen longer lines for voting at that location. The parking lots were full. I've just about decided to wait until election day to vote because I like the excitement and anticipation that imbues the air.

On the way out, I almost yelled out, "I want my library back!" LOL. 

Rasmussen: GOP will pick up 55 House seats.

Jason Tolbert: Bill Clinton's endorsement of state candidates may not count for much this year. See also here.

AP: Working-class whites are flocking to the Republican party. And why not?

Wisconsin may be an omen for the battle for America 2010.

Politico: Democrats believe they are not looking at another 1994 wipeout.

WSJ: Change is coming in the next Congress no matter which party is in control. The Obama heyday is over.

Larry Sabato predicts a GOP tidal wave this fall. Republicans will take over the House, but maybe fall one seat short in the Senate.