POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE: David Horowitz writes that the California recall election "is already shaping the political future not only in California but nationwide":

The big losers in this election were California liberals, feminists, the politics of personal destruction, the myth that the press is not in bed with the Democrats and the image of Republicans as mean-spirited morality police. The Republican Party has suddenly become the big tent it has aspired to be but never quite achieved until now. According to exit polls 55 percent of independents and 18 percent of Democrats voted for Schwarzenegger – despite the fact that the Democratic Party threw all its big guns into the state including all its presidential candidates, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Jesse Jackson. Thirty-nine percent of union households voted for the Republican and thirty percent of Hispanics – despite the fact the Democrat Bustamante would have been the first Hispanic governor in history if he had won. Moreover, the turnout of Republicans themselves was also obviously large with the overwhelming majority of conservatives and an even larger majority of moderate Republicans coming out to vote for him.

In short, the new governor inspires passion in the Republican base and yet hope among those who are often put off by that base. In California, Arnold has created a new Republican coalition that has raised the Republican Party from the dead and produced an electoral landslide in the process. In a state which Republicans lost by a million votes in the last presidential election (without the Democrats having to spend a penny in the state) the combined Republican vote may have exceeded 60 percent -- an electoral landslide. This is what is meant by a political earthquake.