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Celebrating the Most Important Election of the Modern Age

Victory (AP)
November 4, 2014

(Note: The Free Beacon is thrilled with the outcome of Tuesday's election, which we believe to be one of the most important of the modern era. We wanted to express our feelings in an epic post, but ultimately realized that we couldn't say it any better than these respected liberal commenters did following the 2006 midterms, in which Democrats recaptured Congress, and caused the second term of our Greatest Living President to be a little less great. The following was taken, more or less verbatim, from the post-2006 assessments of E.J. Dionne, Paul Krugman, and Walter Shapiro.)

It's over.

American voters, in their wisdom, ended an era on Tuesday. They rejected a poorly conceived domestic and foreign policy agenda that has weakened the United States. They rejected a harshly ideological approach to politics that cast opponents as enemies of equal rights. The voters decided there was no decency in that.

We’re not feeling giddy as much as greatly relieved. O.K., maybe a little giddy. Give ’em hell, Mitch!

This election creates an exceptional opportunity to move away from blind ideology to problem solving and from stupid divisiveness to a politics of remedy and reconciliation. In light of Tuesday's truly stunning victory for Republicans, the resurrection of the legislative branch is no longer in doubt. The outcome should make clear to President Obama that there is a limit to the American people’s patience.

The election wasn’t just the end of the road for Mr. Obama’s reign of error. It was also the end of the eight-year Democratic dominance of the Senate. The Republicans will now hold a majority in the House that is one of the largest in decades.

Now, we don’t expect a permanent Republican lock on power. But we do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the liberal movement that has taken over the Democratic Party. This election could mark the downfall of movement liberalism — the potent alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and dirty hippies that may once have had something to do with ideas, but has become mainly a corrupt political machine. America will be a better place if that machine breaks down.

As long as Democrats control the White House, Republicans will not be able to pass far-reaching measures to deal with worries about ISIS, corporate taxes, and job-killing EPA regulations. What needs to begin is a long struggle to create a new social contract that would protect and lift up the tens of millions of Americans for whom Obamacare is more threat than promise.

But more important than any specific McConnell or Boehner congressional agenda (any major legislation would almost certainly be vetoed by the lame-duck president) is the return of accountability to government.

No one is naive enough to believe that Obama will abandon his hard-line policies just because the president suddenly finds himself between a rock and a hard place. But after Tuesday’s political upheaval, a heedless president is about to be forced to learn a civics lesson about checks and balances.