Now, for the election analysis — including lots of good news from the events of Nov. 2.

There’s no doubt the American electorate in many, many places rejected the Obama-Pelosi-Reid anti-Constitutional approach to government, i.e. Progressivism.

That’s clear, even though the Republican pickup in the Senate was disappointing, especially with the re-election of Harry Reid. Take a look at Republican gains in the State legislatures: 650-700 seats, compared to 505 in 1994. That’s huge.

There’s bad news to be sure.

Boxer won, and by a surprisingly comfortable margin. Polls can still be wildly wrong, apparently. Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi coasted to easy wins, Moonbeam Brown became Governor of California again. State legislators there are their younger clones. All that seals that state’s fate. It will be at least 25 years before the once-Golden State recovers, if ever, no matter who is elected two, four, or six years from now.

Worse still, the majority of voters in Nevada betrayed their fellow citizens by re-electing Harry Reid, who will almost certainly remain Majority Leader. This is bad news far beyond the re-election of one of the six most dangerous Federal employees in the country. (Obama, Reid, Bernanke, EPA head Lisa Jackson, Sec. Sebelius, and any swing vote on the Supreme Court.)

The reason is simple: Reid can now tie up any pro-freedom legislation introduced in the House while Obama has Executive Branch bureaus ensnare the populace through administrative regulations. That means among other things that repeal of any part of ObamaCare will have to wait until 2013. Luckily, the major handouts don’t start until 2014, so there’s time.

Now to leaven our depression with a little more good news.

Russ Feingold got his pink slip. The prime author of legislation that violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech is now unemployed. He has been replaced by a very promising Republican.

The other author of that odious bill, John McCain, conned his way into a six-year reprieve by donning a new conservative suit. However, despite his desire to appear the maverick, McCain can often be relied on to go along with his Republican peers, especially on defense issues. Since Cap-and-Tax is essentially dead for the next two years at least, he can’t do any damage on that score. Better still, he had a close brush with unemployment and may be more cautious for a while.

In more good news, the loathsome Blanche Lincoln — she was a major driver of the ruinous Farm Bill and voted for ObamaCare — has been shown the door with a healthy boot (58% for Boozman v 37% for her) to assist her on her way. With so many nearby states turning Red too, maybe the south really is rising again.

Perhaps best of all, Marco Rubio tromped the opposition in Florida, a state where most voters normally have no idea who they are. Rubio is young, a relatively reliable pro-freedom voice, and he’s being touted as Vice Presidential material. He’s also Cuban-American. While discussions of ethnicity in politics are generally loathsome, it’s a clear indication that Hispanics won’t always vote Democrat.

There are some heartening results in the House races, too. Walt Minnick lost his Idaho seat by a 10% margin. Far from the worst Democrat around — he voted against ObamaCare — he still voted with his party 70% of the time. That’s interesting not so much because Raul Labrador is a Republican — Idaho is firmly a Red State and Minnick’s election a fluke — but because he was such a weak candidate with far inferior TV ads and still won.

All these disparate results offer a clear overall theme: with exceptions like the utterly hopeless Massachusetts, California, and New York, the majority of the American people are now saying they strongly favor fiscal conservatism and limited government — at least for now.

To keep them favoring it will require a continued educational campaign that demonstrates every day the rightness of those positions. Republicans could easily blow it. They have many times before. But there is beginning to build in the House (and to some extent in the Senate) a consensus around Madison’s view of government.

If we help stiffen Congressional spines daily, America has a good chance to gain needed breathing room from the 50-year-long onslaught of Progressivism in government. (Even Reagan had to deal with a Congress that tilted left much of the time.)

Into that gap can slip the cultural changes that are essential to keeping the political momentum going.

That means educating the American people about why every piece of Progressive legislation has harmed them, including Social Security and Medicare — the immoral, impractical, and unconstitutional twin programs that are bankrupting the country.

It means teaching citizens why the Constitution is not just a bunch of rules of thumb. Though the Supreme Court shouldn’t be, they’re heavily influenced by the tone of Congress and public sentiment. If the people believe more firmly in the Constitution, SCOTUS will uphold it more consistently.

It means re-creating a country that broke all the precedents set by the 2,000 years before its founding to become the freest, most innovative, most prosperous, and most moral society in history.

It’s now up to the American people to decide the future they desire. The odds of them choosing wisely, and their chances of success, have just improved by an order of magnitude.

While it’s encouraging that the factory in Youngstown that the president will visit on Tuesday has recently expanded, the city’s painfully high 15.1 percent unemployment rate is a harsh reminder that the “stimulus” has not created jobs “immediately,” or held our national unemployment rate (9.9 percent) below eight percent as the president promised.

Worse yet, the policies of the Obama Administration could quickly put jobs at the factory, which manufactures steel pipes for oil and gas drilling, on the chopping block as it continues to push a “cap-and-trade” national energy tax that will raise energy prices, drive thousands of American jobs overseas to countries with less-stringent environmental regulations, and devastate our domestic oil and gas industries.

Last December the administration unilaterally acted to pave the way for this bureaucratic nightmare, and it’s not looking back. In fact, last week the EPA finalized new rules for manufacturers and power plants scheduled to go into effect in January of next year, regulations that American Iron and Steel Institute President and CEO Thomas Gibson warns “will impose significant new costs on manufacturing industries at the worst possible time… [and] arbitrarily picks winners and losers.”

This disturbing trend of harmful government overreach is only increasing as the administration uses taxpayer bailouts and a bevy of new powers to aid special-interest allies and inject politics into every corner of America.

Just look at the government role in the unequal treatment of thousands of Ohio retirees of the now bankrupt auto parts manufacturer Delphi Corporation.  More than 20,000 Delphi salaried retirees, many of whom live in the Youngstown and Dayton areas, face the loss of health care coverage and up to 70 percent of their monthly pension checks, while obligations to the former company’s union retirees are being covered in full by government-owned General Motors.

Americans across the country are watching this, and they’re saying ‘enough is enough.’

They’re tired of the payoffs, kickbacks and sweetheart deals for Washington’s special-interests.

They are scared as they watch government spend like there is no tomorrow, piling more and more debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren.

And they don’t want the president’s new health care law, which will punish small businesses and states with new mandates, cut Medicare benefits for seniors, and actually increase health care costs, according to a recent report from analysts at the administration’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Already, 20 states have filed suit in court to block the law’s costly mandates.  On Friday, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which represent the nation’s small businesses, announced it will join these efforts to overturn the president’s health care overhaul due to concern it will hurt our economy and prevent the creation of American jobs.

Republicans are listening to these concerns, and we’re offering better solutions to help middle-class families and small businesses tackle the challenges they are facing every day.

We want to repeal the president’s jobs-killing health care law, and replace it with real reform to lower costs.  We want to put an end to taxpayer bailouts, and get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers in the private sector.

And we are offering an “all of the above” energy strategy to create jobs, lower energy costs, and establish a cleaner more reliable energy future, solutions to curb government spending, and a jobs plan to help small businesses create jobs.

President Obama has billed his ‘Main Street’ tour as a ‘listening tour.’  As Ohioans continue to ask “Where are the jobs?” it’s time for the president to scrap his job-killing agenda, and work with Republicans on these types of better solutions to help create new jobs and get our economy moving again.

In other words, he pledged to use the office of Attorney General for good, rather than evil. After just over one month in office, he’s off to one hell of a start.

Last week, AG Cuccinelli boldly petitioned the EPA to convene a proceeding to reexamine their “Endangerment Finding” which claims that human activity has increased atmospheric greenhouse gases to a point that people’s lives are at risk. As such, they claim, the federal government must impose new caps on emissions and other climate protection policies in the energy sector.

Cuccinelli believes, rightly, that regulations based on the findings of the EPA in this sketchy case would be both legally questionable and detrimental to Virginia’s economy. (Much of the research that the EPA has based these findings upon has come from the questionable climate-gate materials). Accordingly, the AG also has petitioned a federal appeals court to review the EPA’s findings.

Keep an eye on this guy. He means business. And by picking these kinds of necessary fights, he’s certainly going to need backup.

As the EPA’s carbon “endangerment finding” in December has demonstrated, it might not be such a good idea to vest virtually unlimited power in a single government agency, especially one that has become as politicized as the EPA.

And like the global warming hysteria the “endangerment finding” was supposed to address, the argument in favor of this aggressive power grab is thin, based on emotional, not scientific appeals, and fairly obviously designed to encroach on the free market. One organization advocating for the EPA power grab, “Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families,” is actually sponsoring a virtual Million Baby Crawl on Washington. Expect the stunts to get more ridiculous after Lautenberg’s bill drops.

There’s actually one really good reason to not grant the EPA the unilateral authority to ban any and all chemicals used in the products we buy: Chemicals are used to make nearly all products we buy. Consider the computer you are using right now. Dozens of chemicals were used during its manufacturing to keep it from overheating, blowing up, or melting down. Many of these chemicals are hazardous but all are safe for their intended use. If Lautenberg overreaches with his bill and the EPA changes the standard for what it considers safe for intended use, American manufacturers who rely on these chemicals could be out of the game while foreign competitors gain yet another leg up. Remember: The EPA would have the authority to ban chemicals used in American-made products, not those made in China or any other country that already flouts laws and commonsense.

The Toxic Substances Control Act, the law Lautenberg is looking to reform or replace, hasn’t been modernized since 1976. It might very well make sense to take another look at the law. But handing over more power to a politicized government agency would be a disaster.

Kim Strassel writes, in “The EPA’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles” in the Wall Street Journal, with typical insight that:

“President Obama, having failed to get climate legislation, didn’t want to show up to the Copenhagen climate talks with a big, fat nothing. So the EPA pulled the pin. In doing so, it exploded its own threat.”

Far from alarm, the feeling sweeping through many quarters of the Democratic Congress is relief. Voters know cap-and-trade is Washington code for painful new energy taxes. With a recession on, the subject has become poisonous in congressional districts. Blue Dogs and swing-state senators watched in alarm as local Democrats in the recent Virginia and New Jersey elections were pounded on the issue, and lost their seats.

But now? Hurrah! It’s the administration’s problem! No one can say Washington isn’t doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency’s move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.”

I am with her up to the end, at which point I must respectfully disagree. This dispute assumes, however, that congressional Republicans have a pulse. Yes, yes, I know, Kim and I may find ourselves on the same page here yet.

What I am saying is that far from relieving congressional Democrats of their cap-and-trade burden, this sets the stage for making it worse. That is, any sentient Republican effort to nationalize, or simply make the most of, the 2010 elections not only ensures that each and every Senate campaign includes the “will you or won’t you?” question about voting to ratify the Kyoto II treaty – now set to be agreed in Mexico, exempting Mexico, and exporting U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico, one week after our November 2010 elections – but it also includes a vow not unlike those found in the Contract With America: “We promise an up-or-down vote on whether the EPA can do this to you and our economy without Congress.”

A sympathetic if more symbolic effort at doing just this fizzled in an appropriations vote this week, buried amid everything else. But broken out as a discrete pledge, and vote, it seems difficult to believe that this would not result in the Congressional Review Act stopping any EPA rulemaking cold.

That, of course, would also require a change in management. Which is part of the pitch. But, again, I may be assuming too much.