There are plenty of numbers to sift through in the coming days, and trust me I have a lot to say about the things that caused last night to be so unnecessarily disappointing.  For now here are just a few quick reads–the total postmortem is certainly pending.

1)  Final Results in Iowa are: Congressional Victors= King, Latham, Braley, and Loebsack.  Iowa Republicans hold the House but lose seven seats (53-47), and Democrats hold the Senate 26-23 with a special convention in SD 22 upcoming.

2)  The lack of money, and the allocation of the relatively little money Senate Republicans did have, surely ended up costing control of the Senate.  On the flip-side the Democrat strategy that we talked about leading up to last night proved to be brilliant.  There is no doubt that they out-raised Republicans financially and then outplayed them tactically.  There is some fascinating stuff going on in this area that we will be laying out in the coming days.

3)  Close races in the Senate and the House were plentiful.  In these cases Democrats being able to harness their union machine to turn out the vote often can eat up and then surpass small Republican voter registration advantages–on the surface it looks like that is exactly what happened in many races.

4)  Having studied the crucial Senate races very closely the last few months, there is no excuse at the State Party level for that poor of a showing by Republicans.  Having such a robust Iowa Caucus earlier this year with a huge slate of candidates, combined with other external forces, should have guaranteed at the minimum a good night for Republicans that had a chance to be great.  The fact that this did not happen will cause even more upheavals between Iowa Republicans and RPI.

5)  The number one excuse you will hear from vested Republicans statewide is that “it was a bad night nationally for nearly all Republicans and that explains our poor showing here”.  That is not going to cut it for me–and I doubt it will for many.

6)  Proof of the terrible night Republicans had nationwide was that Rep. Allen West of Florida was defeated last night.  This is a large blow to the Tea Party as Mr. West, though he has a penchant for pushing the envelope too much with his mouth, was a fantastic voice on fiscal and military issues.

 

Much more will be  coming in the following days…a tough night for the cause to be sure, but with the election now over we must stay tuned into the issues that will be shaped by them.  Let us not forget that first and foremost politics is about issues–not elections.