A stunning tidal wave of change in the Senate
Virginia Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie tells his supporters that the race is too close to call at his election night party in Springfield, Va., Wednesday, Nov. 5. Photo: AP
The Republican victory last night was wide and deep. It gave the GOP control of the Senate. It won them governors’ mansions in Democratic strongholds — Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts. It extended their majority in the House of Representatives.
It wasn’t just that the Republicans took the Senate, which was expected, but did so with unexpected landslides in allegedly close races from Colorado to Arkansas to Georgia (which we were told was going to go to a January runoff).
A problematic GOP candidate in North Carolina knocked off a sitting Democrat he’d been trailing throughout the fall. In the shocker of the night, there’s likely to be a recount in Virginia, where the Republican, Ed Gillespie, was supposedly running 10 to 20 points behind incumbent Mark Warner.
Even the one tight Senate race where an incumbent Democratic hung on, in New Hampshire, ended up insanely close.
There were also races that, we were told, had slipped from Republican hands into potential Democratic territory — in Kansas and South Dakota. Nope. In both cases, the Republican barely broke a sweat winning on Election Night.
But wait, there’s more. The embattled governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, who braved the wrath of public-sector unions as no other politician in America has, was the scalp most liberals wanted. Instead, he easily won his third election in four years and is now in a strong position to make a national run in 2016.
Other GOP governors, under fierce Democratic onslaught, survived, from Rick Scott in Florida to Rick Snyder in Michigan to Sam Brownback in Kansas.
And Republicans extended their margin of control in the House of Representatives by as many as 15 seats — much of the gain coming right here in New York, where it appears they’ve taken five seats away from Democrats.
All in all, this was a far better night than many Republicans privately expected it would be on Tuesday morning. The polling just wasn’t supporting the likelihood of a wave election, and Republicans had good cause to fear that Democrats had adapted the precision election-winning instruments they had used in 2012 to the midterm environment.
For while no one doubted that Democrats had a lousy hand to play in the 2014 midterms, it was clear months ago they were playing that hand as well as it could be played. They were generating early votes and working every angle.
But two things got in their way. First, the hand was just too terrible to be overcome. President Obama’s low-40s approval ratings were a drag everywhere, and the constant drumbeat of bad news all year made it impossible for Democratic candidates to turn the issues around on their challengers.
Second, and more important, was that they were facing a sadder, wiser and tougher Republican Party than they had faced in 2012. The GOP recruited remarkably good candidates who knew how to talk about issues, how to move on Democrats without looking obnoxious, and, most important, how not to commit hara-kiri in debates and in hostile interviews with reporters.
Several of the new GOP senators are uncommonly impressive and will likely play major roles in American politics for years, if not decades.
Ben Sasse of Nebraska is a Yale history Ph.D. and college president. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is a Harvard Law grad who enlisted in the Army and will be the first veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan to serve in the Senate. Shelley Moore Capito, a former journalist, will be the first Republican to represent West Virginia in the Senate in more than half a century.
George W. Bush called the 2006 anti-GOP wave a “thumpin’.” Barack Obama called the 2010 anti-Democratic wave a “shellacking.”
This one? I’d go with a “whomping.”
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