Winners and Losers: 2010 election impact on 2012 candidates

[hotpprs]

Losers:
Obama(who now has a more difficult road to 2012 because the GOP didn't take back the Senate. He can only somewhat play the GOP race & wealth cards for the next 2 years).
Other big losers, Nancy Pelosi and taxpayers in New York and California.

Winners: Romney (who now has a better chance to win because it won't be 2 years of poor defenseless Obama vs a majority GOP Congress and Supreme Court). Also, because of the Tea Party blunders in Delaware,Nevada and Alaska, people who support Palin will be more wary of choosing her at the top of the ticket.
Other winners, unions in New York, California and Nevada.
Rubio is perhaps the biggest winner of all because the Latino vote is essential to any survival of the GOP party as it is. If he doesn't screw up politically or have a major personal scandal, he is assured of being on a Presidential ticket at the top or VP within the next decade.

Little of both: Sarah Palin. She didn't start the Tea Party, but she certainly was the energy behind it. So she has to get the most credit out of any single individual (in a positive sense), for the huge pickups by the GOP.
On the negative side, as I mentioned above, her chances as being on the top of the GOP ticket in 2012 went down dramatically as she will just be tagged with the 3 big Senate failures above, and too risky to potentially blow such as great opportunity to take back the White House.

[hotpprs]

5) California:  Brown will make a bad situation worse by raising taxes and driving out more businesses.

Winners:
Rubio:  will become the face of the GOP Senate

I'll confine my comments to these two fantasies.  

First, the supply-side fantasy:  CA's future will be to ride the waves of the economic cycle, and taxation levels are extremely periferal to this.  In the depression, no amount of tax reduction will help, and in the boom (if there ever is one), a few percent more tax won't matter at all.

Secondly, the Latino Republican fantasy:  I know you have a tumescence for these swarthy faux-latinos in the GOP, but seriously man, everyone sees through the token.

I don't think Rubio is considered a token to Cuban Americans.
It remains to be seen if he will pick up any support for the GOP on the West Coast.
But he is hardly a token Latino as if he was just appointed to a Cabinet position or as a Presidential Czar.