Well, the Republicans both over performed and under-performed for my expectations.

60+ seats is a huge wave one that normally crushes everything beneath it. However, the senate remains in Democratic hands the only question is by how much. Oregon may go Democratic still. Alaska? No way, but right now the Republican and tea-party favorite Joe Miller is behind.

I was surprised to see the democrats hold onto both Colorado and Nevada. I though the wave would be strong enough to sweep both states, but apparently you can be too outside the main stream for even this wave. Frankly I am happy to have Angle and O’Donnell loss their bids.

Now the hard part come in for the Republicans. If the tea Party truly is an independent movement and not the Republican Party in Fancy Dress they are going to expect that this new Congress do more than just snipe from the sidelines. However if this Congress moves against big budget items that are popular — such as Medicare and Social Security — which they will have to do to balance the budget, they’ll see their number tumbles.

As we heard often during the health care debates the Senior Citizens hates socialized Medicine and love Medicare.

There are of course people already talking about what this mean for 2012. Dudes. it is way too early to speak about that.