The Republican party’s brutal defeat in yesterday’s presidential and Senate races offers at least one clear, abiding lesson: Republicans can’t win without making their case.

For all of the worthiness of his campaign, which (to his great credit) was so much more honorable, classy, truthful, and responsible than the president’s — and the extraordinary effort that he devoted to it after so many other Republicans refused to enter the contest during their nation’s time of need — the unfortunate fact is that Mitt Romney too often didn’t prosecute the case.  He didn’t really make the case on Obamacare (and especially on the federal individual mandate), on Libya, on our debt crisis (hitting it only intermittently), or on this president’s demonstrated willingness to circumvent the rule of law to achieve his desired ends (“recess” appointments when the Senate was in session, the steady stream of flagrant actions by this administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, the ongoing actions of its Justice Department, the president’s unilateral decrees gutting welfare reform and asserting that — regardless of what the law says — young illegals are hereafter free to stay in this country, etc.).  How much did the majority of Americans, who primarily get their news from the mainstream press corps or The Daily Show, have any of these concerns on their minds as they entered the polling booth?