Is the GOP now on top? Are we riding the first wave of the next Reagan Revolution? National Review Online consulted some expert strategists to interpret the results of Tuesday’s vote. DAN CASEY Tuesday’s massive GOP sweep in Virginia means Democrats may need to rewrite their statewide Virginia playbook. Their standard tactic of using the social-issues wedge to drive up Democratic margins in northern Virginia appears to have fallen far short of their expectations. Based on my own experience as a Virginia voter (with, sadly, a listed phone number), I think Democratic efforts in the past week were focused almost entirely on going negative on Republican attorney-general nominee Ken Cuccinelli, using this tactic. The pro-Deeds calls were MIA. To the Garden State: With an enormous budget crisis ($8 billion deficit), gargantuan state-pension-funds shortfalls ($24 billion unfunded and counting), and no hope that The Sopranos will come back on HBO, Governor Christie will have his hands full come January. New Jersey is reaching the point of ungovernability. But even amidst the financial gloom, Christie will have a chance to shine over the next four years when he will have the opportunity to appoint at least four new members to the seven-person state supreme court. Candidate Christie has repeatedly promised to make changes to the liberal-activist court — declaring that his nominees would “interpret laws and the Constitution, not legislate from the bench.” Governor Christie should be held to his promise. – Dan Casey is a public-affairs consultant and Republican strategist.

MARJORIE DANNENFELSER To dismiss the narrow defeat of Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman as a lesson in the playing out of the “conservative spoiler” in a three-way race would be to miss the real lesson completely. Conservative efforts on the ground finally gave a voice to the thousands of voters in the district who believe that life, marriage, and fiscal responsibility all matter. Without these people, no GOP candidate can win, in New York or elsewhere. To be frank, this is a win for motivated conservative activists who are driven by issues and not party. Dede Scozzafava’s advocacy of the extreme Obama agenda would have been a great loss for the GOP and all those who care about the values enshrined in its platform. The road to a GOP majority is not paved with taxpayer-funded abortion, same-sex marriage, and government-run health care. The resounding Democratic defeats in Virginia and New Jersey came as the result of a unified effort, and a candidate who heartily embraced conservative values won the largest margin. Such success should serve as a cautionary tale to Congress and the White House, whose overreach on health care could cause them to meet a similar demise. – Marjorie Dannenfelser is the president of the Susan B. Anthony List. MICHAEL FLYNN There are two lessons from Tuesday’s voting. First, ObamaMania is over. The Republicans won a landside in Virginia — just months after Obama’s victory in the state. In New Jersey, the Republican won in an easy trot against an ocean of money, a potential spoiler third-party candidate, and personal appeals at the end of the campaign by President Obama. On January 20 of this year, no one would have predicted these results. I don’t know what panic smells like, but you can get a whiff of it Wednesday on Capitol Hill. The second lesson comes from the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district. The public is poised to hand back to the Republicans huge swaths of political power, but the Republicans can still talk them out of it. As of this writing, Democrat Bill Owens will go to Congress, crossing the finish line with the endorsement of the ersatz former Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava. The national GOP spent almost $1 million promoting a candidate who provided a last–minute endorsement of the Democratic candidate. Yes, truth is stranger than fiction. A recent Fabrizio McLaughlin poll of likely voters found the GOP leading Democrats in the generic ballot for both House and Senate by 7 points. Approval ratings for Republicans in Congress, however, were lower than those for Democrats. The conservative base has shown the way in Virginia, New Jersey, and even in New York. Let’s hope the party catches up to it. – Michael Flynn is editor-in-chief of Big Government. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ Some lessons coming out of Tuesday’s elections: The days of running against George W. Bush have passed. The RNC shouldn’t waste resources on candidates who alienate its base. All kinds of women vote in America — not just women who vote women’s issues, as determined by the National Organization of Professional Abortion Advocates. Barack Obama doesn’t always win. – Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. MATT MAYER Here is my Ohio view of the results: First, only a liberal dead-ender could ignore the results in Virginia and New Jersey. Unquestionably, the size of victory in Virginia and the defeat of a scandal-free incumbent in one of the bluest states is very bad news for the liberal-progressives — especially only one year removed from such a dramatic victory by Barack Obama. Broadly speaking, these results should make conservatives in Ohio feel pretty good about their chances next year to retake the governor’s office and retain a U.S. Senate seat. That said, twelve months is a long time in politics (see 1983-1984 and Ronald Reagan). Next, again from an Ohio perspective, the best news of the night is that the turnout numbers look ordinary – meaning, a return to typical non-POTUS numbers. These numbers matter in Ohio because the turnout numbers in the last three election years have been trending substantially higher than normal. In 2004 and 2008, the POTUS numbers surpassed 5.6 million, which was roughly 1 million more than in 2000. More important, the non-POTUS–year turnout numbers in 2006 — the year Gov. Ted Strickland won — were over 800,000 greater than those of 2002 and 1998. If the turnout numbers remain high in 2010, I think it will be safe to say that the turnout baseline in Ohio is now 800,000 higher in non-POTUS years and 1,000,000 higher in POTUS years. That will be bad for conservatives. This leads to the final point. At a higher turnout level, statewide conservatives face a margins problem. Specifically, in the eleven largest counties (Cuyahoga, Butler, Franklin, Hamilton, Lorain, Lucas, Mahoning, Montgomery, Stark, Summit, and Trumbull) with the nine largest cities (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Lorain, Toledo, Youngstown, Dayton, Canton, Akron), conservatives are losing by margins that are likely impossible to make up in the remaining 77 counties. In 2006, Governor Strickland won those eleven counties by 682,923 votes. In 2008, President Obama won them by 632,776. The reality is that if conservatives cannot keep the margin of defeat in those eleven counties under 500,000 or so, the math becomes too difficult: The margins of victory in the smaller counties must be very wide, which is unlikely if the margins of defeat are wide in the eleven counties (see northern Virginia in 2005 and last night for examples of this effect going both ways). The punchline is that the results should give conservatives in Ohio a boost, because the results indicate a return to normal turnout numbers that will give them decent odds in 2010 to beat an incumbent and keep an open seat – with the obvious caveat being the state of the economy twelve months from now. It is still the economy, stupid. – Matt Mayer is president of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. JOHN J. MILLER Tuesday’s races were not a referendum on President Obama, but they did provide a snapshot of the country’s mood. The Virginia landslide shows that although the mood isn’t precisely anti-Obama, it is more open to conservative policy solutions than it was a year ago. New Jersey really was a referendum, but on incumbent Jon Corzine rather than Obama. NY-23 was the day’s single major letdown; the GOP establishment that created the conditions for this defeat will suffer worse recriminations than it would have if Doug Hoffman had prevailed. – John J. Miller is national correspondent for National Review. His personal website is www.HeyMiller.com. MATT SCHLAPP The reversal of political fortunes for President Obama may be the quickest in memory, but this does not mean the American people have broadly shifted in their opinions on what is needed to help the country. In fact, if President Obama had chosen to govern in the spirit in which the American people entrusted him with the White House, the outcome could have been different. But his policy agenda has been breathtakingly radical and moved at a breakneck pace: the public option, massive new energy taxes through the scheme of cap-and-trade, the ending of free and fair union elections coupled with government–forced salary concessions, a complete rescripting of banking regulations, and perhaps even more stimulus spending. The common denominator of all of these policies is that American regulations and taxes will be out of sync with those of the global economy, which will mean that more manufacturing and financial–services jobs will flee to other countries. A jobless recovery might be a political opening for Republicans, but it will come at a cost none of us wants to endure. The 2009 elections were a loud message to the White House that the change we are getting is scaring the heck out of us, and so much so that these Republicans are starting to look good by comparison. There are five other key take-aways. One: The era of blaming President Bush for everything ended yesterday. There’s a new president, with new ideas, and those are now being judged. Two: Health care and cap-and-trade are in jeopardy again. Democratic leaders may not change course, but their task in getting majorities on these issues will now be substantially tougher. Three: The hardest political job in the country is now being a House Democrat in a McCain or Bush district. These members will have to decide who’s more important – their speaker or their constituency. Four: Any moderate Republican in a primary with a proven conservative should consider a career change, perhaps even a spot on Dancing with the Stars. I would hate to stand between a bold conservative and a Republican–primary voter in 2010. Five: Independents have ended their brief fling with Obama. Both Christie and McDonnell won independents by double-digit margins. – Matt Schlapp is principal of Cove Strategies. KRISTEN SOLTIS The big lesson from last night’s election results is this: Creating a majority coalition matters. Both McDonnell and Christie won independent voters by large margins. Christie presented himself as an electable alternative. McDonnell ran a positive campaign that emphasized concrete ideas to solve problems confronting Virginians. He gave voters something to vote for. He was a thoroughly conservative candidate who, rather than focusing on “firing up his base,” emphasized modern ideas and fiscal responsibility in order to attract independent voters. His model should inspire Republican campaigns across the country. In the end, we live in a center-right nation, and it is critical that we remember to bring together both the “center” and “right.” Despite the good news, it is important that Republicans and conservatives not ignore the other message voters sent: The status quo is unacceptable. Even as voters reject what they are seeing from Democrats in their states and in Washington, they are not enthused about Republicans, either. Furthermore, major pieces of the 2008 Democratic coalition stayed home in these elections. In higher–profile election years, it is likely those voters will be re-energized. This underscores our need to keep independents in our coalition. We can’t just run as the opposition; we have to run in 2010 and 2012 on a positive message about why we are fit to govern. – Kristen Soltis is the director of policy research at the Winston Group, a strategy and polling firm in Washington, D.C.