The Big Question: What did we learn from last night’s elections?

Bill Press, host of the “Bill Press Show” and a contributor to the Pundits Blog, said:
There are at least four lessons to be learned from the results of Tuesday’s elections. One, that politics is anything but predictable. See Blanche Lincoln. Two, that not all incumbents are DOA. Again, see Blanche Lincoln. Three, that sliming women candidates no longer works. See Nikki Haley. And, four, that the Republican Party is still capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating its weakest candidates: See Sharron Angle in Nevada and Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.org, said:
Out here beyond the Beltway, we want politicians to get over the partisan arguing.

Bernie Quigley, Pundits BLog COntributor, said:
We are approaching the beginning of events which will carry the U.S. and the world through the entire century.  Yesterday’s events solidified a trend that started last October in NY 23, and took steam in Virginia, then in Rick Perry’s primary in Texas. The success yesterday of Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman and Nikki Haley in particular bring a new charge to conservatism; a new entrepreneurial spirit of conservatism which rises in the South and the western states. Demographics have been bringing us to this point since the end of the Second World War. Now we see a materialization of a new America, ditching the baggage of 20th century ideology and born free again in the western desert.

Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University, said:
The take-away message from last night’s results is that the Republican Party is moving to the right much faster than the Democratic Party is moving to the left. 

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:
Rather than go into a state-by-state analysis, which is what the question really calls for, I’ll just point out two races that capture the meaning of the election, or, rather, that aspect of the results which I find interesting.

In Nevada, the GOP establishment, which put up GOP state chair Sue Loweden, was crushed by the “Tea Party” candidate, Sharon Angle, a longtime grassroots activist. The pushing of Lowden enraged the party’s libertarian wing, which had been on the verge of taking over the Nevade party convention during the last GOP presidential primary, and sending Nevada’s delegates to the national convention pledged to Ron Paul, when Lowden suspended the voting, closed down the convention, and “elected” McCain delegates via a hastily-arranged teleconference. With support from the Campaign for Liberty, the organization founded by Rep. Paul in the wake of his presidential campaign, Lowden was laid low, and the grassroots triumphed.

In Arkansas, where Blanche Lincoln fended off a labor-backed left-wing challenger, the “progressives” showed their movement lacks the kind of steam that energizes the new right-wing populism — and that there is no effective equivalent on the left. Targeted for opposing single-payer healthcare, Lincoln painted herself as a “centrist” to Democratic voters, and won the day.

My verdict: the American left is on life support, having had the life sucked out of it by the Obama cult. The right, on the other hand, is on the rise: not the neoconservative right of David Frum and chin-pullers like Ross Douthet, but a new libertarian populism intent on rolling back the power and reach of the federal government.