Washington Examiner cartoonist Nate Beeler sums up the Republican contest thus far quite aptly:

In the accompanying commentary, Beeler observes, “While the Republican heavies snipe at each other over who is the real conservative in the race, Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave.” Part of the problem, though, is that while Reagan and Goldwater both called themselves “conservatives,” the former was mostly a tax cutting, strong defense populist and the latter a small government libertarian.

Reagan was the more successful politician not only because he was the better messenger but because his message appealed to more people. Goldwater, however, had a much more coherent ideology. Reagan preached smaller government, lower taxes, and a huge military to defeat Soviet Communism. As the old joke says: Pick two.

Given the stakes, Reagan’s military buildup made sense and sacrificing fiscal sanity in order to achieve it was defensible. With the Cold War over and the Soviets replaced by a much more discrete enemy in Islamist terrorist-guerrillas, though, Reagan’s formula no longer makes sense. Republicans continue to rely on it, however, while continuing the “small government” mantra.

Dan Balz, Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta analyze a new ABC/WaPo poll showing that Rudy Giuliani continues to dominate the Republican field and find that “electability” is a key reason for his strong showing.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll of the Republican field shows Giuliani with a sizeable lead over his three principal rivals. The former mayor was the choice of 37 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, well ahead of Arizona Sen. John McCain and the still-undeclared Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee, virtually tied at 16 and 15 percent, respectively. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney ran fourth with 8 percent.

Giuliani’s frontrunner status is fueled by a broad-based perception that he is the party’s most electable candidate. Nearly half of Republicans believe Giuliani is their party’s best chance of winning in November 2008; that is three or four times higher than the percentage mentioning other candidates. Democrats and independents also said Giuliani would represent the Republicans’ best shot at holding onto the White House.

(I should note that only question in the linked poll about the “electability” issue, #40, is asked of Democrats; I can’t find a similar question asked of Republicans. I presume there was comparable question asked of Republicans that was omitted during the editing process. What follows presumes Balz and company aren’t making this up out of thin air.)

It worries me when “electability” becomes a major part of people’s calculations. That was a large part of the reason Democrats nominated John Kerry in 2004. While he came very close, he ultimately couldn’t beat a very flawed incumbent, leaving partisans to wonder how they would have done had they nominated a candidate about whom the base could get more enthusiastic.

To be sure, practicality is sometimes necessary. It makes little sense to defeat a RINO/DINO incumbent in a state dominated by the opposition party on the grounds they are insufficiently conservative/liberal. But presidential nominees are chosen by a much larger percentage of the voters and over a much wider swatch of the country. It’s rare, indeed, for that process to pick someone so ideologically extreme as to be unelectable.

Now, I’m not yet sold on any of the candidates. I’ve got serious reservations about Giuliani but could very well, when it comes to it, decide that he’s the best of the bunch. But I hope that, if he becomes the nominee, he does so because he’s the consensus favorite among the alternatives, not because people are trying to project what happens months down the road. Further, Guiliani certainly has plenty of baggage, so I’m not even sure the idea that he is “the most electable” is even correct.

Scott Keyes takes a look at the former Members of Congress who lost re-election bids or campaigns for higher office to see what they’re doing now and what plans they may have for a political future.

Greg Giroux notes that, for all the clamor about the radical sweep made by the electorate in the recent midterm elections, 94 percent of those who sought re-election were successful. This was, however, a drop from the 98 percent plus rate in 2004.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have sent a letter to President Bush–and everyone else–arguing against a “surge” of forces in Iraq.

Some excerpts and commentary:

The American people demonstrated in the November elections that they don’t believe your current Iraq policy will lead to success and that we need a change in direction for the sake of our troops and the Iraqi people

While the polls do seem to show that, it’s hardly the case that the elections “demonstrated” this. Indeed, it’s generally hard to say that midterm elections demonstrate much of anything in the aggregate, since they’re a series of one-on-one match-ups. While there was a general “we need change” motif to the campaign, there was hardly a coherent platform. For that matter, not every Democrat who won the election supports the Pelosi-Reid position on the war.

Despite the fact that our troops have been pushed to the breaking point and, in many cases, have already served multiple tours in Iraq, news reports suggest that you believe the solution to the civil war in Iraq is to require additional sacrifices from our troops and are therefore prepared to proceed with a substantial U.S. troop increase.

That our “troops have been pushed to the breaking point” is hardly an established “fact.” As to many of them having served multiple tours, it is, after all, their job to fight their country’s wars.

Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed.

Although I’m willing to be sold, I think a surge at this point is a bad idea. Still, it’s silly to argue that it has
“already [been] tried and that has already failed.” In the early days of the war, critics were complaining that that Bush and company had sent too few troops. When, exactly, did we try a surge?

Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain.

Uh, isn’t the military already stretched to the breaking point? You just said so, remember?

And the fact that there is no purely military solution–the administration’s view as well–does not been there isn’t a military component to the solution. It’s far from clear that adding troops will only put troops in danger; it’s conceivable that a well executed use of force would lower the risk.

And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future.

But making someone else “take responsibility” for cleaning up a mess we helped create is problematic, no?

In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq: “I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It’s easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.” [ You should probably either have included this passage OR the paragraphs above where you said exactly the same thing. -ed.)]

Yet these commanders have been in charge on the ground without the surge. How is that working out for them?

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement . . In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.

Kinda like the Iraq Study Group suggestions that pretty much everyone else has dismissed? And isn’t the principal mission of our forces already training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror?

Rick Santorum’s re-election defeat has had one previously unexplored consequence: the end of free candy for Senators.

With Democrats back in control of Congress for the first time in years, much is changing in the nation’s capital, including a longtime tradition in the U.S. Senate: the “candy desk.”

For a decade until his defeat last year, Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, stocked the desk with donations from home-state candy makers including Hershey Co. and Just Born Inc., maker of Hot Tamales and Peanut Chews. With Mr. Santorum gone, the desk, which is dipped into by many members, has been turned over to Sen. Craig Thomas, a Republican from Wyoming. But his state is better known for bison than bonbons — and that’s a big problem.

Ethics rules forbid members accepting gifts worth $100 or more a year from a single source. One exception covers items produced in a senator’s home state — so long as they’re used primarily by people other than the senator or his staff. The provision was crafted to allow senators to offer visitors home-grown snacks, such as Florida orange juice or Georgia peanuts.

Yes, Pennsylvania still has its requisite two Senators. You’d think the candy makers could pony up some goodies for them, too, right? But it’s not so simple:

As it happens, relying on Pennsylvania wasn’t an option. Mr. Santorum’s successor, Bob Casey, is a Democrat, and the candy desk has by tradition always been located on the Republican side of the Senate chamber, in a heavily trafficked area near the exit to the elevators. The state’s other senator, Arlen Specter, a Republican, already has a choice seat toward the front.

We’ll see how the Senate adapts to this monumental development.

þ: Taegan Goddard

I’ve received two BREAKING NEWS alerts from CNN in my inbox today:

“Congress convened today with Democrats in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in a dozen years.” (12:06)

“California Democrat Nancy Pelosi has become the first woman to be elected speaker of the United States House of Representatives.” (1:33)

Are either of these surprising to anyone who would actually subscribe to CNN alerts?

The Economist features a piece by “Lexington” contending that, Zell Miller’s book nothwithstanding, the Democrats are a national party while the Republican Party no longer has much appeal outside the South.

The extent of the southernisation of the Republican Party is astonishing. The party was all but wiped out in its historic base, the north-east. There is now only one Republican in the 22-strong New England House delegation. New Hampshire kicked out its two Republican congressmen (and gave Democrats a majority in both state houses for the first time since 1874). Massachusetts ended 16 years of Republican occupation of the governor’s mansion. Rhode Island decapitated Lincoln Chafee despite his moderate record. New York installed Democrats in every statewide office for the first time since 1938.

The Republicans also suffered big losses in a region that voted solidly for Bush in 2004—the Mountain West. Three Republicans lost house seats. Conrad Burns lost his Senate seat in Montana (59% for Bush in 2004). Democrats now control five of the eight governorships in the region, compared with none in 2000.

Kevin Drum is on board with this thesis, although he believes it is the Texification of the GOP and its “messianic insistence that you’re not a real American unless you worship at their churches, watch their sports, and raise your family the way they tell you” that is at issue.

Michael van der Galien agrees that 2006 should be a wake-up call and believes “2007 and 2008 will be two highly interesting ‘political’ years: will the Republican party change and will its ‘new’ leaders embrace moderation and unity instead of polarization?”

Steve Benen is cautious about drawing too much from one election cycle but is encouraged. Jonathan Singer makes similar disclaimers before gushing,

But if history is any indicator, the fact that a number of these previously Republican-leaning states are not only electing Democrats to state-level offices (both for governorships and legislatures) but also sending Democrats to Washington (both Congressmen and Senators) augurs well for the Democratic Party as it attempts to extend the list of states in which it can compete in Presidential elections. And the more the Democrats put the GOP on the defensive in states like Colorado or Arkansas, both of which elected new Democratic governors by wide margins, the more the Republicans will be forced into challenging Democratic strongholds like Oregon or Michigan — neither of which are particularly welcoming of candidates running on a hard-right platform.

Matthew Yglesias, though, calls for A Little Perspective.

It seems to me that the real lesson of this delicious irony is that we should be guarded against pundits’ habit of over-interpreting election results. After all, back in 1998 the conventional wisdom was that the GOP was in danger of shrinking to become a merely regional party. Then, in late 2004 and early 2005, the Democrats were in danger of shrinking to become a merely regional party. Now in late 2006, the GOP is once again in danger of shrinking to become a merely regional party. Realistically, I think this is all more-or-less hysteria and nobody is going to become merely regional — things will just sort of swing back and forth, with the Democrats maintaining a semi-permanent reservoir of strength in the Urban Archipelago and the GOP having a similar bastion in the South.

While this may indeed, as his first commenter kids, derail Yglesias’ chances for entry into the überpundit class, he’s entirely correct.

Could the Republican Party fall by the wayside by clinging too much to a social conservative base? Perhaps. But if history is any indicator, that’s not going to happen.

For one thing, the 2006 election was not a national referendum on Republican ideology but rather on Republicans’ performance. The reason they did better in the South than they did elsewhere was for the same reason Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale won only DC and their home states: When things go badly for a party, swing states swing against them; the more badly, the more swing. Perhaps that’s why they’re called swing states?

The number of times that the Democrats have been pronounced dead in just the last twenty years is staggering. Remember the Electoral College Lock that the Republicans had that ensured no Democrat would ever win the White House again? Or when Bill Clinton was running third behind Bush 41 and Ross Perot and there was speculation as to whether the Democrats would qualify for matching funds in 1996? Both evaporated with the 1992 election.

Matt’s right: The pundit class invariably reads way, way too much into the results of a single election. The temptation to extrapolate one data point into an infinite trend is just too great to resist, apparently. It is nonetheless incredibly silly.

David Sanger notes that those calling for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq seem strangely silent now that the election is over and the anti-Iraq side won convincingly.

To some degree, this is a function of the institutional arrangements of our government. In a parliamentary system, a sweep in the legislature yields a new prime minister and cabinet and, generally, rather swift policy changes. Our system, with its separation of powers, tends to change much more gradually.

Furthermore, elections seem to have surprisingly little impact in matters of foreign policy. Franklin Roosevelt won re-election in 1940 pledging to keep us out of the war in Europe and then did everything he could to get us in. Richard Nixon got elected in 1968 touting a secret plan to get us out of Vietnam with honor; he finally got us out in his second term, minus the honor. Bill Clinton lambasted George Bush the Elder’s policies toward China and Haiti in 1992 and then continued them for the eight years of his administration. George W. Bush ran against nation building in 2000 and, well, you know how that turned out.

Jon Henke, brought aboard a sinking ship as George Allen’s New Media Coordinator, argues that the Left Blogosphere and Democratic candidates did a far better job of working together than their Right/Republican counterparts in the decisive Allen-Webb race in particular and the election in general. Given the number of very close races, Henke proclaims, “Were Democrats not as engaged, they would not have the Senate today; were Republicans more engaged, they would still have the Senate.”

That’s not falsifiable, of course, but it’s at least plausible. While Kos and company have been derided here and elsewhere for their poor showings in the last two election cycles, having an 0-and-whatever record with candidates they supported, they undeniably laid the groundwork for a get-out-the-meme network that is unparalleled on the right.

Kos, MyDD and others pioneered blogs as a communitarian enterprise rather than outlets for individual punditry. John Amato invented video blogging before there was such a thing as YouTube. They have done a tremendous job of capitalizing on the popularity, especially among college students and 20-somethings, of Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, and (more recently) Keith Olbermann and quickly spreading their more effective bits and rants. Red State, Hot Air, and others have arisen in reaction but have not achieved anything like the critical mass of their predecessors.

Whether these differences are cultural reflections of what makes some people “conservatives” and others “liberals” or a natural outcome of the Left having come just short of winning a series of close elections (which many of them believe were stolen from them) or some other factor, I don’t know. Henke is right, though, that the Right will have to figure out how to use the power of the New Media (or Personal Media, or whatever name ultimately attaches to it) more effectively.

The problem, though, is that I don’t want the Right Blogosphere to turn into a mirror image of the Left Blogosphere. While I’d love to have the traffic and influence of DailyKos, I’m not interested in emulating its style. It remains to be seen whether there’s a way to maximize the influence of the blogosphere while being civil and thoughtful.

In my morning-after election analysis, I noted that it would be very difficult for the Republicans to take the House back in 2008 but that the Senate was well within grasp if the GOP got their act together. I wrote that without actually breaking down the races, though. Chris Cillizza has and it does not bode well:

A cursory evaluation of the 2008 Senate playing field shows Democrats seemingly well-positioned to build on their 51-seat majority. Of the 33 seats up for reelection, just 12 are held by Democrats. And of those 12, only two Democratic incumbents received less than 54 percent of the vote in 2002 — Sens. Tim Johnson (S.D.) and Mary Landrieu (La.). Johnson took 50 percent in his victory over John Thune (who went on to beat Tom Daschle two years later), while Landrieu won a December runoff against Republican Suzie Haik Terrell with 52 percent of the vote.

Republicans must defend 22 seats and have more obvious vulnerabilities. At first glance, just three GOP senators — Norm Coleman (Minn.), John Sununu (N.H.) and Wayne Allard (Colo.) — look vulnerable, as each won in 2002 with less than 54 percent of the vote. But the complicating factor for Republicans is that there are a number of rumored retirements that may come before 2008, creating more open-seat opportunities for Democrats. GOP incumbents on the retirement watch list include Allard, as well as Thad Cochran (Miss.), Pete Domenici (N.M.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and John Warner (Va.).

The five close races from ‘06 could go either way in ‘08 depending on the candidates and the top of the ticket. That Landrieu has won two razor close elections and barely beat Terrell, one of the worst Senate nominees imaginable, is especially promising. Nor am I particularly worried about losing statewide in Mississippi, Nebraska, or Oklahoma.

Warner’s seat will be incredibly vulnerable, though. Virginia is getting bluer by the day as the DC exurbs of Northern Virginia continue to experience huge population growth. And popular former Governor Mark Warner would be an odds-on favorite if he choses to run.

The GOP had just about everything imaginable working against them this past election and just barely lost their majority. They might need just about everything imaginable going their way next time to win it back.

There were some interesting trends: Phone polls tended to be better than online surveys, and companies that used recorded voices rather than live humans in their surveys were standouts. Nearly everyone had some big misses, though, such as predicting that races would be too close to call when in fact they were won by healthy margins. Also, I found that being loyal to a particular polling outfit may not be wise. Taking an average of the five most recent polls for a given state, regardless of the author — a measure compiled by Pollster.com — yielded a higher accuracy rate than most individual pollsters.

The only thing surprising here is that recorded voices did better than live humans. Given the number of pollsters considered here, though, I’m not sure there’s enough data to make a judgment on this issue. Smart pollsters already ensure that they use call centers headquartered in places to more-or-less ensure that the voices people hear are accent free. It’s hard to believe that robot callers–on whom I immediately hang up–are more likely to get a response.

Otherwise, the results are as expected. Indeed, it’s amazing that Internet polls come even close to being accurate, since they are by definition self-selected samples. Telephone surveys, with their high hang-up rates, could theoretically wind up that way but careful replacement of hang-ups with others in the same demographic block should cancel that out.

On to the results: In the Senate races, the average error on the margin of victory was tightly bunched for all the phone polls. Rasmussen (25 races) and Mason-Dixon (15) each were off by an average of fewer than four points on the margin. Zogby’s phone polls (10) and SurveyUSA (18) each missed by slightly more than four points. Just four of the 68 phone polls missed by 10 points or more, with the widest miss at 18 points.

But the performance of Zogby Interactive, the unit that conducts surveys online, demonstrates the dubious value of judging polls only by whether they pick winners correctly. As Zogby noted in a press release, its online polls identified 18 of 19 Senate winners correctly. But its predictions missed by an average of 8.6 percentage points in those polls — at least twice the average miss of four other polling operations I examined. Zogby predicted a nine-point win for Democrat Herb Kohl in Wisconsin; he won by 37 points. Democrat Maria Cantwell was expected to win by four points in Washington; she won by 17. (Zogby cooperated with WSJ.com on an online polling project that tracked some Senate and gubernatorial races.)

The picture was similar in the gubernatorial races (where Zogby polled only online, not by phone). Mason-Dixon’s average error was under 3.4 points in 14 races. Rasmussen missed by an average of 3.8 points in 30 races; SurveyUSA was off by 4.4 points, on average, in 18 races. But Zogby’s online poll missed by an average of 8.3 points, erring on six races by more than 15 points.

Zogby’s online polls “just blew it” in Colorado and Arkansas governor races, Chief Executive John Zogby told me. (See Zogby’s scorecard.) In other races, such as the two Senate races I mentioned, “we had the right direction but a closer race than the final.” One explanation, he said, may be that Zogby’s final online polls collected responses one to two weeks before the election, whereas other polling firms were active until the final week. “We have more work to do” to improve online polling, Mr. Zogby said, but he added, “we believe it’s not only the wave of the future, but the future is very close to now.”

So much for Zogby’s bragging.

Daniel Gross reports:

… the poll for the House vote in the East showed that the 25 percent of the electorate making over $100,000 went big for Democrats overall, 57-42, compared with a 49-48 margin in 2004. In 2006, those making between $150,000 and $200,000 voted for Democratic candidates by a whopping 63-37 majority, and those making more than $200,000 went Democratic by a slim 50-48 margin. That’s a huge shift from 2004, when Republicans took the $150,000 to $200,000 demographic 50-48 and rang up a huge victory among the over $200,000 set: 56-40. In 2006, Democratic candidates racked up big wins among college graduates—63-35, compared with 55-42 in 2004—and among those with postgraduate degrees—68-31, compared with 58-38 in 2004. …

On a nationwide basis, the wealthy still vote Republican. But not by much. According to the 2006 exit poll, on a nationwide basis, of all homes making more than $100,000, Republican House candidates received a 51-47 majority, and among those making more than $200,000, Republicans racked up a 53-46 majority.

Are these voters behaving irrationally? Gross opines:

As the number and relative weight of the wealthy grow, their incomes rising in part because Republicans have cut taxes on their incomes and capital gains, they’re proving themselves less likely to vote their economic interests.

Actually, I suspect that the blue-shifted voters figured they could have their cake and eat it too. With Bush in the White House to veto any tax increases and the Democrats having promised AMT reform, these voters’ economic interests were safe. (To be sure, there’s a modest risk that the Democrats will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire when the sunset provisions begin kicking in a few years down the road, but voters probably gambled that the Democrats will renew most of the key cuts.) With their economic interests secure, they were free to vote based on the war or stem cells or what have you.

The more interesting test will be in 2008, when there will be a real prospect of unified Democrat government, which could more significantly threaten the economic interests of upper middle and upper class voters. If they shift back to the red at the Presidential level, we’ll know that they are economically rational after all.

That is my hope, but I have to wonder if it really will mean a slowdown in government spending. Over at Cato Stephen Silivinski writes the following,

Despite what Republicans have been saying the past few weeks, the Democratic takeover of the House won’t necessarily be a bad thing for the economy. That’s not because the Democrats have good ideas on economic policy. They don’t. Instead, the benefits will come from the presence of a divided government and its ensuing gridlock. For instance, gridlock usually slows down the rate of growth in federal spending. That will likely lead to a reduction of the size of government as a percentage of GDP, and that’s always a good thing for the economy.

Also, the Democratic takeover of the House will likely not have much of an effect on the Bush tax cuts. The cuts don’t expire until 2010 and, in the meantime, Bush would discover where he stashed his veto pen if a Democratic Congress tries to reverse them. Besides, Democrats won’t have a veto-proof majority in Congress, and many red-state Democrats are not going to be eager to raise taxes anyway. Couple that with the gridlock-related slowdown in the rate of budget growth and you have the ingredients for a better set of fiscal outcomes than supporters of limited- government have seen in six years.

In the past six years President Bush, admittedly with the help of Republicans in Congress, has shown that he is not at all adverse to spending more money and expanding the role of government. As such, I have to wonder if suddenly he is going to get some sort of ideological backbone when it comes to spending proposals put forward by the Democrats. I have to say I’m quite skeptical about it and I don’t think we are going to see the kind of constraint gridlock puts on spending that we saw under Clinton when the Republicans took power in 1994. Hell, back then the Republicans were so adverse to spending increases they in budget showdowns they shut down the government. For some reason I don’t think that Bush will do anything like that.

Greg Mankiw points to some interesting data on the price of stocks for Big Pharma.

While overall the stock market was up, the stock price of these big pharamceutical companies took a hit? Mankiw’s interprets this data to mean that the Democrats are going to do something about drug prices. My guess is he is right, and that something will be the “donut hole” in Medicare Part D. I also agree with Prof. Mankiw, that this will likely mean less research into new drugs in the future. And as Prof. Mankiw points out, “this is good news if you are going to get sick now, not so good if you are going to get sick in the distant future.” Frankly, I’d find it quite ironic (and sad) if the Democrats do close the “donut hole” and then it delays or even prohibits cures for things like Alzheimers and Parkinsons.