Throughout the year, Republicans employed a tried and true tactic: Call Democrats liberals, associate them with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and wait for voters to get scared and default to the Republican candidate. The only trouble is, this year that tactic didn't work.

Republicans take heart in the fact that some Democrats who beat them, like Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright or Mississippi Rep. Travis Childers, would be comfortably at home in the GOP conference. They argue that the election of such conservative Democrats still augers well for the GOP's more conservative message.

But Republicans went after both Bright and Childers for associating with Pelosi, with Barack Obama, the Senate's most liberal member as ranked by National Journal, and with any number of Democrats farther left than Bright or Childers. But Bright and Childers, among many others, won anyway. GOP strategists privately worry that the very word "liberal," which used to be a scarlet letter for any Democrat, is losing its effectiveness as a political scare tactic.