elephants fighting  blieusong at www.flickr.com  Republicans
went into Tuesday's election fully confident that Mitt Romney
would defeat Barack Obama.  In the three months leading up to
the election — and even in the dark days of the "47 percent"
video leak — virtually every Republican strategist and
conservative politico I spoke to was certain that Romney would
pull off a victory. Arguments to the contrary were resoundingly
dismissed as "a lot of Nate Silver spin."  Instead, the GOP got
totally routed Tuesday, losing the White House in an electoral
college landslide and squandering what was once a prime
opportunity to retake control of the Senate.   It turns out that
Republicans had based their projections on two misguided
assumptions:  1.  That Obama could never win in such a poor
economy. Historically, no incumbent since FDR has ever won
reelection when the unemployment rate was above 7%, or when the
consumer-confidence index was below 95 (it was at 72 in
October).   But history only predicts the future unt