Mind you this is just a thought but there might be good news in last night's defeat. For all the talk of states rights and stopping the Obama agenda, there has been one thing missing in speeches today. No one's mentioning stopping the repeal of DADT, no one's talking about a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, no one's talking about destroying Roe v. Wade. The HCR bill is being dismissed based on economic terms not social ones which is promising to me at least.
I know that a lot of the candiates have talked about these items but it seems to be very low on exit polls and not talked about in this new wave of Tea Party Republicanism. It seems we've won or at the very least have an advantage in social politics. We still have a fight on Net Neutrality, legalization of marijuana. But the biggest issues of the past seem to be falling towards the wayside in our favor.
What will make this interesting is if this is true then a new battle over economic policies will occur and open up a whole new can of worms, especially from people who say they left one party for another because of social issues but preferred the economic policies of their old party.
Maybe the way to victory isn't just to let the Tea Party GOP do the same things they did the last time they had power but to focus on an economic agenda now that we've seemingly won the PR war on social issues. Maybe I'm just being optimistic but I think we're in good shape for 2012.