From Politico:

From @GOP12

In South Carolina Republicans voting today chose 1) Palin 25% 2) Huck 24% 3) Romney 20% 4) Newt 10% for 2012

In New Hampshire, Republicans voting today chose Romney 39%, Palin 28%, Huck 11%, Gingrich 8% for 2012

Among Iowan Republicans who cast their vote today, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are tied at 21%, Palin at 18%, Gingrich 7% in '12

Also saw someone tweet this:
returns for #AKSen are coming in. bulk are from Anchorage area, which is heavily Murkowski. waiting for rest of state

I don't like the looks of Colorado for Buck. I think Bennet is going to win. Colorado Springs is in, but downtown Denver is only half reported. Bennet will pull away

The Senate races have been a disappointment in my book. Tea Party candidates lost a lot of races: Nevada, Colorado, and now Alaska doesn't look good either.

I'm really discouraged because I want to repeal Obamacare, and we need 60 senate seats to do that. At least Toomey won and Feingold is gone!

Agh! Someone drive a stake in her & tell her she's done!

It should be Nov. '10, not 11

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And these candidates lost not because of a conservative message but because of stupid statements and past actions.

That is good good news!

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"I've always believed the mission is greater than the man..." -Governor Rick Perry
"We're not choosing a pastor-in-chief, we're choosing a commander-in-chief." -Pastor Michael Youssef

That and tepid support (at best) from the GOP hierarchy, don't you think?

Anyone have any recent figures from Colorado, or Washington? They look close, but they are never updated (the number of votes counted)

Washington looks like it's going to be really, really close. Colorado doesn't look good. It's possible, but Buck would have to win handily in the Denver suburbs. The rural counties are largely in, with mainly Denver yet to report.

A few silver linings for you:

1) Tea Party candidates losing in the Senate will reinforce the meme that Tea Party Candidates can't win in heavily contested general elections. That's not fair obviously (i.e. Rubio), but it'll help our guy in 2012 if he and Palin both run. For once the "electability" charge will be someone else's burden to bear.

2) Democrats still control 2/3 of the executive and legislative branches, meaning they'll still get most of the blame for anything that goes wrong in the next two years. Much of the country thought Republicans still controlled Washington when they voted for Obama in 2008 despite the fact that Dems had controlled both houses of Congress since 2006. Allowing the Dems to keep control of the Senate by a narrow margin may actually make Obama easier to beat in 2012.

3) To repeal Obamacare we'd need more than 60 seats in the Senate because we'd have to be able to override Obama's veto. That was never going to happen anyway. The best we can hope for is to defund Obamacare with control of the purse strings in the House and repeal the thing after electing a Republican President and additional Republican Senators in 2012, which we're now in a good position to do.

4) We've won a bunch of Governor seats tonight (flipping 8 seats so far, by my count), which have mostly flown under the radar. These wins will be big for redistricting purposes, implementing (or refusing to implement) Obama's policies (i.e. healthcare) at the state level, and helping get a Republican elected President in 2012. We now have Republican Governors in Ohio (a HUGE swing state), Pennsylvania (usually Dem but could flip Republican), and hopefully Florida (though, I'm not a big fan of the guy either). Needless to say, these Governor pickups are BIG.

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Overall, it has been a positive night. I just checked to see what the Kos kooks are saying, and they are upset/disappointed/angry about losing. I do agree that tonight will hurt Palin's chances, especially if Miller loses in Alaska. Electability will be an important issue in the presidential primary, and everybody knows that Palin is the least electable Republican in the field. Tonight has been a negative for Palin.

I'm encouraged by the pickups in the House. By having the House but not the Senate we should be able to pass whatever we want in the House, only to have it die in the Senate. We can make a lot of political statements this way and point out to people that Democrats are blocking reform.

The reality is the country choose conservatives and Republicans tonight, but 2/3rds of the Senate and the president were not on the ballot. Democrats that were on the ballot were voted out of office in large numbers, even though I was hoping for a bit more. I wanted 80 House seats and 10 or 11 Senate seats. C'est la vie.

P.S. California is a lost cause.

California reminds of Sweden; people being too depending on the government to vote it away, even though they know their system is unsustainable. This is not unique for California, but surely you can see it here. It's one thing to say you support Fiorina, another thing to actually vote for her when you're standing there at the polling place and remembers that if she wins, she just might cut the federal spending you're depending on.

We've had this problem for 70 years in Sweden. It's kind of tricky to get out of, and the longer you wait, the harder it is.

Late night here in Iowa. I will give our 14 Huck PAC candidate update tomorrow. All I can say is that I have never felt so good about 2012 as I do now. It's great to be a Huckabee supporter.

As a side note, anyone else sick of Marco Rubio being called the "tea party candidate?" I know the tea party backed him but he was not a product of the tea party nor did his sole support come from the tea party.

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"We fought, we dreamed, that dream is still with us."
Ronald Reagan, 1976

TEAM HUCK IOWA
http://www.facebook.com/TeamHuckIowa

Colorado-with 70% reporting:
Buck-47.4%
Bennet-47.2%

Way too close to call. It's hard to say how the Denver suburbs (Jefferson and Arapahoe counties in particular)will end up. They tend to be more moderate/conservative than Denver itself. While they are currently light blue on the map, Jefferson county has only reported 48% and Arapahoe only 10% (apparently, they ran out of ballots and had to wait for more---hope that's a good sign!). Colorado Springs still has several thousand ballots to count. It ain't over yet!

The beauty of it though is that Sweden, like California, will eventually realize that it's unsustainable. But first they need to get the whole neutral mentality out of their heads. That might take a little while. Det är livet.

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I share Huck's birthday...I was a few years too late though

Coloradomom, thanks for giving me hope!:)

This seat... plus Washington... oh, and Miller in AK. Then it's fair enough

While I wish Miller the best, his defeat would come with a (small!) silver lining: Palin would take the biggest blow from it.

Still want him to win, though. Murkowski simply isn't a good senator; she has entitlement syndrome written on her front head!

Chadballer, first, let me point out that "C'est la vie" properly translated to Swedish is "Sånt är livet" Nice try though, always fun when foreigners try to translate something to our beautiful language

In Sweden, we - unfortunately - have gone the route of slow deconstruction of the welfare state. Lots and lots of concessions have been made. But the government acted fiscally conservative through the crisis at least - we got a lower national debt today than in 2006. Though I think that's because at the start of the crisis, the government were down 20 % in the polls and figure since they were never going to be re-elected anyway, they could just as well use tough fiscal conservative measures and rein in spending and cut taxes. I mean, what could they lose? To everyone's - the government included - great surprise, this was extremely popular, and by april 2009 they had tied the leftists in the polls.

Still, since no-one is really challenging the basic attitudes and principles behind the welfare state, I'm afraid it will stay with us for a long time.

/John

Wendero,

I was an exchange student there for 10 months or so and i guess no one bothered to correct me. But yeah, I found myself wondering if Sweden would ever stand for anything, at least in my experience. Didn't have a lot of time for politics while I was there and could barely figure out how the system worked.

It has been deeply ingrained in the system though and I think a good step would be to reform the elections system in Sweden so that it could make sense, not to mention a few more checks and balances. The Swedes are honest people when they want to be, but on the other are just...well very different than Americans.

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I share Huck's birthday...I was a few years too late though