To: technomageThere is a small, but significant amount, of selfish, cut and run, short term thinking idiots who call themselves conservatives (and at least one big whiner is on the radio) that would rather put their country at dire risk by getting Dims elected by their actions.
Taking the Virginia Senate race as a good example of how badly things went tonight, compare the 2004 and 2006 exit polls.
Registered Republicans composed 39% of voters in both elections. 95% of them voted for Bush in 2004 and 93% for George Allen today.
Self described conservatives made up 38% of voters in 2004 and 36% today, and broke for Allen even more heavily than they had for Bush - 85% for Bush, 87% for Allen.
Registered Independents composed 26% of voters in both elections. In 2004, they favored Bush by 10 - today, they favored Webb by 9. A quarter of the electorate swung 20 points in 2 years. That's huge.
I looked up Missouri and the numbers are just about the same. More self described conservatives turned out, they broke for the Republican even more strongly than in 2004, and it didn't matter because moderates swung 22 points towards the Dem.
It looks to me like when it came down to it, the turnout machine worked, conservative voters held their noses and held up their end of the deal pretty damn well. But swing voters don't owe Republicans anything. They don't agree with us on every issue, or necessarily even most of the issues, so the threat of Democrats winning doesn't scare them. Give them sleazy politics as usual without an overriding message to vote for and they will vote for someone else. We did, they did, and let no one say they didn't see this coming years ago.
Whoever posted Virginia "data" about "Registered Republicans" and "Registered Independents" might want to know that we do not have party registration in Virginia.