The totality of the loss yesterday will not be seen by the masses for some time. Tony Blankley at Townhall Has this:

. We conservatives were not ready to lead in 1964. By 1980 and 1994, under Reagan and Gingrich, we had figured out how to talk to a majority of the country with both principles and programs that gained a majority endorsement. We no longer were just standing on our high horse declaiming to a nation. We were on the ground, with the people, leading them into the citadel of power.

We have allowed the elites of the GOP drift from the core beliefs that they (reluctantly I believe) endorsed in electing Reagan and in Gingrich’s mini revolution. The endorsement by the elites was self serving – it gave them power. They never really believed in smaller government and lower taxes. They used the Conservatives as a granite staircase to climb to the heights, but once they attained Olympus they ignored the granite they stood on and tried to build a new platform of clouds – clouds of big government ideas, trying to buy the affection of those who would never love them.

The elites have been knocked down, we need a new leadership from the base – willing to rebuild the party on the core principals and ignore those who held that only by purchasing the admiration of the greedy left could we succeed.