This election was supposed to be too close to call in Republicans’ efforts to retain control of state government in Wisconsin and in states where Republicans were trying to win Senate races to take over the U.S. Senate.

Never mind.

It is hard to see how this election could have gone much better for Republicans. Gov. Scott Walker was reelected. Brad Schimel was elected attorney general. The candidate who pledged to work to eliminate the state treasurer’s office won, replacing the candidate who made the same pledge four years ago and then changed his mind.

Walker won because of a combination of enough voters thinking he’s doing a good job as governor, and enough voters thinking Mary Burke wouldn’t be an improvement. Schimel ran on not being a partisan, which is refreshing in our hyperpartisan days, because (contrary to what Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm thinks) justice shouldn’t have a D or R tag on it.

The Republicans gained a seat in the state Senate, replacing Sen. Dale Schultz, the leader of the Dale Schultz Party, with an actual fiscal conservative (and a CPA), Rep. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green). That was despite Schultz’s efforts to anoint a successor not named Marklein, who committed the unpardonable sin of running against his own party’s incumbent.

Marklein touted himself as being an independent, which seemed a stretch. So did opponent Pat Bomhack, which was a ridiculous assertion given that state Democratic Party leadership (if that’s what you want to call them) recruited Bomhack (getting Bomhack, who had never won an election before, to switch races, in fact) to run against a candidate that wasn’t raising sufficient money and, perhaps, seemed as if he might not do everything Senate Democrats wanted him to do.

The winner list definitely includes U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, who seemed to me too conservative to win in the Sixth Congressional District, which does include some Democratic parts. So does the 17th Senate District, where Marklein won. Since I don’t live in the Sixth anymore, I neglected to find out the last time it sent a Democrat to Congress, but it’s been quite a while. The 17th, meanwhile, has elected exactly two Democrats since statehood. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) is in the majority party in the Senate, and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) is not.

Sometimes, elections aren’t about who wins, but who loses. That certainly includes Burke, whose campaign was summed up in four words: I’m Not Scott Walker. Burke showed nothing, and neither did anyone on her behalf, that demonstrated her ability to be governor. The loser list also includes Democratic attorney general candidate Susan Happ, who showed that she apparently doesn’t run her office very well, and gives plea bargains to people who don’t deserve them.

Who else lost last night? Barack Obama, beyond question. Iowa now has two Republican U.S. senators, with military veteran Joni Ernst replacing pottymouth Tom Harkin. Obama’s home state, Illinois, will have a Republican governor. Union thug Richard Trumka predicted that Burke would defeat Walker. Wrong again.

Schultz lost, though he was not running, because his sort-of-endorsed would-be replacement lost. Schultz hates the tea party (which means he apparently hates a lot of people who voted for him), and yet didn’t present himself as an alternative to too-conservative Republicans and too-liberal Democrats by running for governor as an independent.

Not everything went well, but it never does. U.S. Ron Kind (D-La Crosse) was reelected despite his achieving nothing in Congress. Secretary of State Douglas La Follette was reelected despite his doing nothing on taxpayer expense. The latter can be explained by Republican opponent Julian Bradley’s refusal to advocate to eliminate the office, which meant voters had no actual choice. Voters did have an actual choice in the state treasurer race, and look how that worked out.

People who don’t like last night’s results will blame them on big money, or stupid voters. Both are the Lament of the Loser. As for the money complaint, too much money is spent in getting and keeping office because the stakes are too high in elections, both in Wisconsin and nationally. The answer is not campaign finance “reform”; it’s cutting legislative pay and staff and reducing the size and scope of government at every level.

Politics is like sports except that the season never ends, and therefore there is no final winner. Ads for the 2016 presidential race will begin in 5 … 4 … 3 …

The election is today, which means we need only hang on until 8 p.m., after which the damnable political ads on radio and TV and in your mailbox will end.

(Before I go on: Read the Obligatory Disclaimer on this page, so you know that these are my opinions and my opinions alone.)

Republicans replaced Democrats left and, well, left in the elections four years ago. Having endured an illegitimate recall, Gov. Scott Walker is now running for his second term, amid questions about whether he’s going to run for president soon after this election.

Every election is a referendum on the incumbent, or at least the incumbent party. The incumbent party in Wisconsin is quite obviously the Republican Party, to which voters entrusted state government four years ago.

Walker cleaned up the fiscal mess left by the James Doyle administration to the point where the state budget is running a surplus, and the rainy-day fund ignored by Doyle has actual money in it. Only reflexive Walker-haters (which include those legislative Democrats who suddenly discover interest in fiscal responsibility — this means you, Kathleen Vinehout!) can claim state finances aren’t in better shape than they were four years ago.

School districts, municipalities and counties complain about not getting enough money from state government. I don’t mean to be cynical (for once), but school districts, municipalities and counties have claimed they aren’t getting enough money from state government during my entire lifetime regardless of whether the governor is a Democrat or Republican, or which party controls the two houses of the Legislature.

One good thing about the Republican Party (which is not perfect, and, as I have said before, does not include me among its membership) is that it has fiscal conservatives who put their work where their mouths are. This includes Rep. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), running to replace Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center). Marklein is who you can thank for the UW System tuition freeze, which will certainly go away without Marklein in the Senate and Walker back as governor.

There are people running for office — for instance, Rep. Janis Ringhand (D-Evansville), running for the 15th Senate District — who claim that (insert function of government here) needs more “revenue.” Ringhand brought that up herself about local (that is, non-state) roads. Ringhand may be right. But when I asked her what in government should be cut so that local roads got more money, she didn’t have an answer for that; only that more revenue was needed.

That is why if you didn’t vote for a single Democrat Tuesday, you would be making the right choice. Democrats are fiscally irresponsible and fiscally unconservative. Fiscal conservatives do not raise taxes, and they certainly do not raise taxes as a first choice. Until the time when — or, more likely, if — Democrats let back into their party such actual fiscal conservatives as former Democratic Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer, Democrats cannot be trusted with your tax dollars. Based on some comments Democrats have made, the state Democratic Party will not be happy until we are number one in the nation in state and local taxes.

Walker also cut taxes. He didn’t cut them enough, as far as I’m concerned, but Doyle raised taxes $2.2 billion in a state that has taxes that are already too high. Mary Burke hasn’t said she’ll cut taxes, and she didn’t oppose Doyle’s tax increases before she started running for governor.

Walker has been criticized for being divisive. Complaints of divisiveness are always from the losing side, or the side that thinks it’s losing. Besides that, if you believe divisiveness is the number one political sin, then Abraham Lincoln shouldn’t have fought the Civil War to end slavery, and non-whites should have shut up about their civil rights, because the civil rights movement was divisive. So was the anti-Vietnam War movement. If you complain about divisiveness, then you’re complaining about people exercising their First Amendment rights.

The Act 10 public employee collective bargaining reforms didn’t go far enough, because people paid by our tax dollars should not be allowed to be in unions. What Act 10 did, however, is to put the correct people in charge — people we elect to run municipalities and school districts — in such issues as pay and benefits. That means that, for instance, bad teachers, while not being able to be fired immediately, now can be put on a path of improve-or-leave. The unions should never, ever, ever, ever have their hands on tax dollars, and that is what they were able to control in the bad old days.

The election therefore is not about being divisive; it is about what the incumbents did, and what they promise to do. It is also about whether the alternative is better, instead of being merely, in Burke’s case, Not Scott Walker.

Burke is the most unqualified major-party candidate for governor in my lifetime in this state. I wouldn’t vote for Tom Barrett, and before him Doyle, for dog-catcher, but one couldn’t really argue they weren’t qualified to be governor; they were just wrong on the issues. Burke is not only wrong on the issues, but she has proved at no point that she can even make decisions, let alone the right decisions. If you want a puppet of the public employee unions, Burke is your choice.

Walker didn’t meet his jobs pledge. And yet the state created more jobs in his four years in office, no thanks to Barack Obama, than the Doyle administration lost in its eight years in office. (Which, by the way, includes years of economic expansion nationally.) The state unemployment rate is lower than two-thirds of states and the national average. And for the first time in more than three decades, personal income growth now exceeds the national average. So to say that the state’s economy is in bad shape compared to other states is a lie. (This means you, Ruth Conniff!)

Voters for Burke and other Democrats should also remember this: Even if Burke wins, and even if Democrats take the Senate, Republicans will remain in charge in the Assembly. This means that Act 10 is not going away. This means that concealed-carry is not going away. This means that the state minimum wage is not going up.

The bad guys in government are (among others) the public employee unions. Walker and Republicans stood up to the unions. That should be enough reason right there to vote for Walker and other Republicans.

“Other Republicans” include someone who had nothing to do with Act 10, Waukesha County district attorney Brad Schimel, now running for attorney general. In addition to the well publicized cases where Jefferson County D.A. Susan Happ made the wrong decisions in prosecution (including, worst of all, someone who shot to death two people and gets to get out of prison in five years instead of dying in prison), Happ has already said she won’t defend laws she disagrees with. We have had quite enough politics in law enforcement as it is. Schimel says he will defend and enforce laws regardless of which party enacted them.

State treasurer Matt Adamczyk also deserves your vote because he wants to get rid of his office, as his predecessor Kurt Schuller said he would advocate, but now refuses. Secretary of state candidate Julian Bradley should get points for not being Doug La Follette, but Bradley does not want to get rid of the useless secretary of state office.