ET, Sarah P., lots of tea, Terry B., Chuck Grassley- and new MC's from the GOP

The first thing an astronomy buff such as myself must remark upon when it comes to the outcome of yesterday's election is that it was a good night for the extraterrestrial crowd. After all, a Moonbeam was elected governor of California, and a Martian was elected to the United States Senate from Kentucky.

By the way, only last night did I realize for the first time that the inhabitant of the West Virginia Governor's Mansion was Governor Manchin. After January, he'll be Senator Manchin.

About the only real surprise here in Iowa was the defeat of Secretary of State Michael Mauro, a fixture of what is naively referred to hereabouts as "the Des Moines Democratic machine." He will be replaced in January by Republican Matt Schultz. Nobody saw that coming- especially since (with one notable exception) all the other incumbents in statewide races were handily re-elected.

That exception was Democratic Governor Chet Culver, who went down to defeat at the hands of former governor Terry Branstad. The Once-and-Future Governor's margin was only about half of what the polls predicted, though- a paltry six points.

Our ageless senior U.S. Senator, Chuck Grassley, made short work of Des Moines Democratic attorney Roxanne Conlin. His not quite 2-to-1 margin was a squeaker for Grassley, though.

Re-election is one thing; retention is another. As I predicted yesterday, all three of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who were up for retention this year were ousted by margins ranging from nine to ten points. The reason was voter displeasure over a unanimous Supreme Court decision redefining marriage to include couples of the same gender.

In my home state of Illinois, Republican State Sen. Mark Kirk defeated State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias for President Obama's old seat in the U.S. Senate. The race between Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and Republican Sen. Bill Brady remains too close to call this Wednesday afternoon. In addition to succeeding to the Governor's Mansion when Rod Blagojevich was impeached, Quinn is known mosty for ruining a system which provided Illinois with much better state represetatives much more cheaply when he led a successful drive to do away with the state's clever and effective multi-member district system by which each voter had three votes which he could either cast for one candidate or divide among two or three. The system weakened incumbents and political machines by making them vulnerable to challenge by independent groups. Ironically, the clueless Quinn thought he was strengthening the reformers and weakening the Chicago Machine. I still don't see how he reached this conclusion, since under the old system the Machine had to divide its strength between two candidates in every Democratic district (custom allowed the minority party to have one of the three), while its opponents could field only one- and thereby force the Machine to get twice as many people to vote for its guys in order to simply break even.

Republicans- as expected- took over the state House of Representatives. Democrats- as expected- narrowly retained the state Senate. This will make it difficult (though not impossible) for a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's gay "marriage" ruling to pass the legislature. Iowa's constitution requires a referendum every ten years on whether or not to hold a constitutional convention., and since this provided the most direct route to a referendum on the subject, I had a hunch that habit and the recommendations of almost every politician of either party would be overcome and the referendum passed. I should have known better. Iowans are conservative people who don't like to take chances, and the fear of a "runaway" constitutional convention doing all sorts of crazy things outweighed their desire for a quick reversal of the consequences of that Supreme Court decision.

Regrettably, Rep. Leonard Bowell- er, Boswell (his name is written in cursive letters on his campaign sign, which even after all these years makes me do a double-take) was re-elected after one of the most personal negative TV campaigns I have ever seen. State Sen. Brad Zaun, his opponent, nevertheless was more gracious in defeat than I think I could have been.

It will be nice not to have to see those negative ads anymore. Most candidates on both sides used nothing but attack ads. It got so bad that one of our local weatherman began his broadcast one night with a negative ad against himself: "Ugly forecasts. Lots of rain. Bad for Iowa."

A third ET- the Queen of the Planet Shrill- will be leaving the post of Speaker of the U.S. House in January. She will be replaced by an earthling. The days of what- though the media predictably hasn't noticed- has been the most extreme Leftward lurch our government has taken since the New Deal are over. Barack Obama will be playing defense for the next two years. And while the examples of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton warn against prematurely writing the president's political obituary, Republicans nationally are feeling a whole lot better today than they have since the morning after Dubyah was re-elected in 2004.

The 2012 GOP nomination is clearly worth having. While her success in electing her hand-picked candidates was distinctly mixed yesterday, perceptions are everything in politics- and the almost universal perception seems to be that Sarah Palin has greatly improved her chances of ensuring Mr. Obama's re-election by being nominated to run against him. Mitt Romney may be the only Republican in a position to keep the GOP's chances of winning back the White House viable. Should Palin be nominated (or Obama be re-elected some other way), I've pretty much picked out my candidate for 2012: newly elected Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a guy I've had my eye on ever since he was in the U.S. House.

The Tea Party- that ephemeral if much-demonized movement which has displayed an uncomfortable tendency toward defeating viable candidates in Republican primaries and replacing them with individuals of dubious contact with reality- also had a relatively good, though not entirely unmixed, night. It's worth noting, though, that there seem to be a great many people who believe that if Mike Castle rather than Christine ("I Am Not a Witch") O'Donnell had won the Republican primary in Delaware, the Republicans would have wound up winning one more Senate seat than they did yesterday. And similarly, Nevada pundits seem to think that Harry Reid would have lost if Republicans in that state had nominated a conventional Republican instead of Tea Partier Sharron Angle.