There’s no reason for conservatives to be Pollyannaish about Tuesday’s results. President Obama’s re-election, coupled with Democratic gains in the Senate, mean that his national health care law will be implemented as planned, taxes will rise, and there will be no hope of genuinely reforming of our nation’s broken entitlement system in the near future.

But as tempting as it will be for analysts to pin the GOP’s 2012 defeat on an embrace of small-government extremism, the results from last night don’t actually bear this out.