Despite the stunning size of the Republican victory, pundits and pollsters were quick to declare that the election did not represent a “mandate” for the GOP.

By Robert Stacy McCain at American Spectator

EXCERPTS:

The sheer size of the electoral tsunami that swept Buerkle and scores of other Republicans into Congress has been underplayed by the major media, which have preferred instead to focus on the failure of the GOP to capture a Senate majority. But the electoral math always favored Democrats in this year’s Senate campaign, and Republicans still scored important Senate pickups in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Arkansas, North Dakota and Wisconsin. (Would anyone have bet two years ago that the GOP could defeat Russ Feingold in 2010?) The survival of Harry Reid as Senator Majority Leader — the only good news for Democrats in the mid-terms — was predictably the big story in the liberal press in the immediate aftermath of Election Day. And so the enormous Republican gains in the House have not yet been fully comprehended by most Americans.

The defeat of Boucher, who had kept his rural coal-country district in the Democrat column for 28 years — even surviving the 1994 Republican landslide — was a clear sign of just how deep the GOP wave was. It continued a trend of partisan realignment in the South, defeating long-serving Democrats in districts that had not elected a Republican since Reconstruction. In Florida’s 2nd District, Steve Southerland defeated seven-term incumbent Allen Boyd by a margin of more than 30,000 votes. In South Carolina’s 5th District, Republican Mick Mulvaney won by more than 20,000 votes over 14-term incumbent John Spratt, powerful chairman of the House Budget Committee.

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