In the wake of the election, conservatives are full of advice for President Obama. The "unmistakable message" of the election, says presumptive House Speaker John Boehner, is "change course," and that begins by cutting spending and lowering taxes. The election, writes a dyspeptic George F. Will, was "nationwide recoil against Barack Obama's idea of unlimited government." A rational and alarmed American majority, says Will, believed that "government commands and controls" were "superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society's spontaneous order."
Were voters really unleashing their hidden Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand?
It's true that conservatives, aroused in part by the Tea Party and its opposition to Obama, came out in large numbers - making up more than 40 percent of the electorate last week. The Obama base, probably exhausted - as Velma Hall famously told the president in an October town hall meeting, "of defending you, defending your administration" - turned out in smaller numbers.
But the whiter, older, more conservative electorate last Tuesday remained skeptical of the conservative agenda. On spending, these voters were of mixed minds. Asked in exit polls what the first priority of Congress should be, as many said spending to create jobs (37 percent) as said reducing the deficit (39 percent). On taxes, the conservative position was taken by a distinct minority of Tuesday's voters, with 39 percent saying Congress should extend the Bush tax cuts to all, while more than half the voters supported extending them only to those with incomes under $250,000 (37 percent) or not extending them all (15 percent).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110903639.html