This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, November 4th, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown. The Tea Party is coming to Washington.

With historic wins of the U.S. House and big gains in the U.S. Senate, the Tea Party movement has made a strong statement.

But what did that statement say exactly?

And what pitfalls await those who want, as many have tried in the past, to change Washington. John Samples is director of the Cato Institute

Center for Representative Government and author of the struggle to limit

government. He comments. One of the immediate responses that I heard from people

I know in following up on this election

saying oh it's a big win for Republicans was well look at all the incumbents who

were not kicked out of office and I guess once you leave aside people who lost in

primaries and things like that maybe the incumbency rate is actually not that

high but how do you read the incumbency rate this time around versus previous midterm

elections?

Well, I mean, compared to the, you have to go back to the 19th century to make this look like it was a poor

turnover. Something we're in a period where and have been for most of the

century last century where there's not a lot of turnover in the

house. Going into this election in the house there was talk of about a hundred

seats being a little more than one hundred seats being, where the challenger could win.

As we know, it's something a little over 60 actually did change hands in terms of party and by the terms of elections, particularly in the post World War II

era, that's just a huge turnover and you did have competition beyond that but that does mean that since we have 435 members of the house

That well over 300 seats are not considered competitive even though they are being run.

I think, you know, the Barney Frank seat is very much of an indication of what we're talking about here.

It was thought that he was in trouble,

...