I suspect it will take months or even years for those on the political and ideological Right to map out a strategy to compete in national elections after two sound defeats in 2006 and 2008. 

The first step has been to assign blame for these defeats, to anyone who will listen.  This op-ed by Governor Christie Todd Whitman in yesterday's Washington Post lays the blame on "social fundamentalists."  I don't know how constructive that is -- each Party has a base, and if you alienate the base, you have to make inroads substantially across the political center to make up for it.  The most liberal Republican he could have picked for his running mate would have been Whitman herself.  I don't think that ticket would have run any better against Obama-Biden this year.

I usually post a link to "Budget Battles," my weekly column on nationlajournal.com, within a day or so of it being published. But this week I decided to wait a few extra days because of a presentation I was asked to make about the column to a number of members of the House of Representatives. For those of you who haven't seen it, here's the link.

The column talks about the increasingly obvious decision of the Bush administration to be satisfied with not having a positive legacy.