Except in North Korea, you never win ‘em all.

Oh, yeah - Cuba, too.

Texas Republicans lost some races they wanted badly to win, and in Dallas County, where I live, took a pasting at the courthouse level. This was definitely not according to plan!

And yet, when you get down to political brass tacks, the GOP acquitted itself fairly well. Not so well as to claim new constituencies, new peaks from which to govern. Well enough, all the same, in these extraordinary times to create the conditions for retaking lost ground and annexing new territory. It will take work and luck. Doesn't it always?

The notable element of the gubernatorial election was the endorsement that Gov. Rick Perry received for a record that has showed some conservative philosophical consistency. When state government, a couple of sessions back, lacked the cash to cover the bills it expected to receive, Perry ordered across-the-board budget cuts. He very properly didn't want to raise taxes, so he didn't raise them, the way a governor of Massachusetts or Oregon would have done.

Another Perry achievement - in collusion with other Republicans and some Democrats as well - was the fashioning of a Robin Hood rewrite that eases (slowly, too slowly) the burdens of the property tax payers while resolving for now the legal tangles caused by this idiotic way of financing public schools so as generally to ensure educational mediocrity.

He went even further: He set up a new commission to study the property tax appraisal system, then put in charge of it no less worthy a conservative than ex-Republican state chairman Tom Pauken.

Maybe most Texans didn't notice. Those who did notice had to be encouraged by Perry's energy in behalf of cleaning up an appraisal system hard for local voters to control but, oh, so useful to the local officials who rake in (and, of course spend) all the cash.

These are the sorts of things that conservative governors ought to do, not just to maintain credibility with the electorate but also to maintain a climate of small (well, anyway these days smallish) government that honors the virtues of hard work and initiative by neither overtaxing nor overregulating them.

A major, major challenge for the future is that of rationalizing public education: putting it at the service of the community instead of the education bureaucracy, which includes - alas!- many a local school board.

What the state needs, to put it bluntly, is a broad-based system of choice that lets students opt out of failing schools and into charter or private schools. We're not there yet. Rural legislators in particular aren't ready to take on their local school boards, whose members in many cases are close friends. Still, the job has to be done some day soon. 

While we await the moment, we might consider that the principles on which choice is based - freedom and unregulated excellence - are the same principles voters have indirectly affirmed this year via their electoral picks. 

Philosophical consistency, one of these days, is going to demand the destruction of the monopoly model for education and the construction of a full-blown system of school choice.

Among the notable features of this year's election cycle has been the punishment meted out to many around the country who seemed not to have a clue regarding their purposes in holding office. Supposedly you don't hold office just to hold it. You hold it in order to do something you can't do without holding office. Yet too many national Republicans have seemed to regard office as an end in itself: a broad, paved highway to power and lobbyist-paid trips to Royal St. Andrew's for a few rounds of golf.

Power, as we know, courtesy of Lord Acton and bitter experience, is corruptive. So is it seductive. It sucks one in: not unlike the famous talking snake of Genesis. It undermines, among other worthwhile things, political and philosophical consistency - and, in the end, can get the power-seeker tossed out of office on his ear. As witness this week.

It isn't yet a rule of thumb, but it ought to be: You generally - not infallibly, but generally - come out ahead when you do the right thing. Yes, even in politics. You create a body of work instead of isolated examples of cleverness or evasion.  And people notice. When you ask them to vote for you, they may not automatically say yes, but they're a lot likelier to if they don't suppose you a dirty rat - as seemingly the voters supposed enough Republicans so as to lift Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Charlie Rangel and Barney Frank (etc., etc., etc.) to positions where they can better oppose conservative principles.

Dick Armey, the greatest Texan ever born in North Dakota, said it well in the Wall Street Journal: "To voters I say: Demand substance and you will get it. To Republican candidates for office I say: Offer good policy and you will create a winning constituency for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom."

Printed with permission from the Lonestar Report.

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