Defeat Tastes Just Fine for Conservatives

How is the right wing coping with last night’s crushing defeat. They’re keeping a stiff upper lip, mostly. Here’s a sampling:

• Jonah Goldberg’s torn by two competing hopes: the hope that Obama will govern from the center, and the hope that Democrats will instead go hog-wild and “walk en masse into the rear rotor blade of a helicopter called the 2010 elections.”

• The public has “clearly rejected the Republican party,” but that doesn’t mean it’s embraced liberalism, say the National Review’s editors. Conservatives should work with Democrats if the agenda is centrist, but shouldn’t be “mealy-mouthed apologetic or timorous.”
• In fact, “conservatives should welcome tomorrow,” declares Michael Brendan Dougherty of the American Conservative, because it brings a choice for Republicans: “reform or be scattered to the winds.”