Last night, networks began calling the state of Ohio — and as a result, the entire presidential election — for President Obama just after 11pm EST, but that did nothing to discourage Republican strategist Karl Rove, who for 20 minutes simply refused to acknowledge that Mitt Romney could have lost the state.

Even after Fox News’ own decision desk projected President Obama would win a second term, Rove insisted to host Chris Wallace that all of the numbers that poll watchers and newsrooms across the country were seeing were wrong:

WALLACE: I’m going to ask you a straight out question. You went through this in 2000, you almost went through this in 2004. Do you believe that Ohio has been settled?

ROVE: No, I don’t.

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What followed was a theatrical display worthy of a Broadway stage. Confronted with hard, verifiable facts and statistics by their own team of experts that they happened to dislike, the Fox News hosts sent co-anchor Megyn Kelly marching from the studio to the offices housing the network’s decision desk to confront them on their call of Ohio for Obama.

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Remarkably, even after the network’s experts calmly explained to the Fox News audience that the outstanding vote at that point in the night included a large portion of the heavily Democratic county of Cuyahoga and that there were just not enough outstanding Republican votes to overcome Mitt Romney’s deficit, Karl Rove kept digging:

ROVE: I just wonder, when you’re sitting there with 4.4 million votes cast, a difference of 991 votes between the two candidates, the difference is 49.19% to 49.17%, if a little bit of caution might not be better.

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Ever since several news networks were forced to backtrack on their initial calls of Florida for Al Gore in 2000, producers have been more careful before issuing projections. But Rove’s logic — that Ohio remained too close to call because at one point the difference between both candidates was less than 1000 votes — completely ignores the scientific methodology behind issuing projections. The entire scene was reminiscent of Rove’s infamous 2006 appearance on NPR in which, confronted with polls showing huge pickups for Democrats in the midterm elections, Rove complained that “you may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math. I’m entitled to the math.”

Rove’s math failed him once again, as President Obama expanded his lead to more than 100,000 votes as more precincts began reporting their results. And despite predictions that the entire election would hinge on the results in Ohio, Obama would have still emerged victorious even if Romney carried the state. .

The 2012 House and Senate races were to a significant degree about the GOP’s shift to the far right of the American historical norm — assaults on the fundamentals of the social safety net unseen since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, unprecedented attempts to restrict women’s reproductive freedom, and near-theological devotion to lowering tax rates for top earners beyond their already-historic lows. But a major trend in Tuesday’s elections was a rejection of many of the Congressional aspirants who most famously embodied these ideas. Here’s six of the candidates closely aligned with the extreme elements in the Republican Party who went down to defeat:

HOUSE: Joe Walsh, Illinois

Rep. Walsh is perhaps the most famous of the Republican class of 2010 — one observer labelled him “the biggest media hound in the freshman class.” Walsh’s means of getting attention was principally his hardest of right policy positions and a series of outlandish, offensive statements. Walsh was one of the leading opponents of raising the debt ceiling despite the catastrophic consequences of not doing so, an issue that will be coming up again in the near future. He also claimed President Obama was only elected because “he pushed that magical button: a black man who was articulate, liberal, the whole white guilt, all of that” and argued that welfare was “destructive” for the poor people it helps. Walsh was defeated by Iraq war veteran and amputee Tammy Duckworth, whom he had insinuated wasn’t a “true hero” and described her record as “Female, wounded veteran … ehhh.”

SENATE: Richard Mourdock, Indiana

State Treasurer Mourdock epitomizes the process by which the Tea Party has come to control the GOP Congressional caucus, taking out incumbent moderate Sen. Richard Lugar in a bitterly contested primary. Unlike his predecessor, who was famous for working with then-Senator Obama on foreign policy issues, Mourdock appears not to believe in real bipartisanship – he thinks “bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.” It seems unlikely, however, that Democrats will want to come around to Mourdock’s positions — he is now infamous for claiming that a rape pregnancy “a gift from God…something God intended to happen” to justify his maximalist anti-choice position and refusing to apologize for the remarks.

HOUSE: Allen West, Florida

Rep. West may have even Walsh beat for most inflammatory member of the House. He has called for the censorship of American newspapers, said feminism and liberal women were “neutering” America’s men, claimed the FBI was committing “cultural suicide” by removing Islamophobic material from its training courses, and has compared progressives to both Nazis and Stalinists. And that’s just scratching the surface of West bombast, a pattern so outlandish that he became a media fixture despite an almost non-existent record of passing legislation.

SENATE: Todd Akin, Missouri

“If it’s a legitimate rape,” Rep. Akin infamously intoned in August, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin’s remarks kicked off 2012′s string of offensive comments about rape by GOP candidates, partly as a consequence of the fact that Akin had worked with Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan to make it such that Medicaid would only cover “forcible rape.” Akin also has been linked to a “Christian supremacist” preacher with disturbing views on rape and abortion and believes Medicare is unconstitutional. Though Akin was widely believed to be a heavy favorite before the “legitimate rape” comments, he was beaten handily by incumbent Senator Clare McCaskill (D).

SENATE: George Allen, Virginia

Former Senator Allen first lost his job in 2006, when he referred to an Indian-American campaign staffer as “macaca.” Though Allen tried to play down that incident, he has a long history of racial trouble — declaring Confederate history month as VA governor without mentioning slavery, stereotyping reporters, and reportedly demonstrating flatly racist attitudes during his football playing days. Allen also has a viciously anti-gay record: among other things, he has called for criminalizing gay sex. Finally, according to the League of Conservation Voters, Allen has “one of the worst environmental records ever,” something probably not unrelated to the fact that he’s in bed with the country’s worst corporations on the environment.

SENATE: Denny Rehberg, Montana

Less famous than the other names on this list, Rep. Rehberg is nonetheless quite representative of standard views in the GOP Congressional delegation. Rehberg believes taking health care away from the poor is the “most common sense path” to reducing the deficit, introduced legislation to ban the United Nations from stealing American guns, and sponsored a bill that blocked access to birth control and defunded Planned Parenthood. Rehberg also has a long and unbroken history of anti-gay activism.

Across the country last night, voters cast their ballots largely in favor of progressive policies and progressive candidates, topping it off with a decisive victory for President Obama. With a slim majority in the Senate and the House still held by Republicans, Democrats have little time to waste before they start working to get the votes needed to implement their progressive agenda. Here are the top five progressive policies Obama and Congress should get to work on right now:

1. Immigration reform.

Obama’s directive telling the Department of Homeland Security to stop deporting young, undocumented students and service members was a good start, but Obama has promised full immigration reform. With 75 percent of the Latino vote, immigration advocates have pinned their hopes on Obama’s re-election. Plus, there are plenty of Republicans who have embraced a pro-immigrant, pro-reform stance who might prove helpful allies in the fight to make our immigration system more fair and more open.

2. Climate change legislation.

Early on in Obama’s first term, he tried to push the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill. But it stalled in the Senate, was left there forgotten, and climate change was hardly mentioned again. In his victory speech last night, though, Obama said, “We want our children to live in an America… that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.” That claim could be backed up by any number of pieces of legislation to reduce carbon emissions and prepare for an already-warming planet.

3. LGBT equality.

Obama has announced his personal support for marriage equality, but it’s time for him to turn his personal respect for the LGBT community into a set of actions. Congress can begin by passing the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which would stop employers from firing a person simply because he or she is LGBT — a right that most people think is already afforded to LGBT Americans. He can also focus on fully repealing the Defense of Marriage Act.

4. Marijuana reform.

Last night, referendums to make marijuana legal for recreational use passed in Colorado and Washington. In Massachusetts and Montana, voters approved other initiatives to destigmatize marijuana use. The drug has been decriminalized in more than half of the United States. It makes sense for the country: Drug incarceration is responsible for about a quarter of the people in prison in the US, and those are largely low-income African American men. GQ reported earlier this election cycle that Obama would “pivot” to the drug war in his second term — and with Colorado and Washington now clashing with federal law, that pivot might need to happen soon.

5. Helping homeowners.

The new term will allow Obama to appoint a new head for the Federal Housing Finance Agency — an important move, since the current acting director blocked aid for struggling homeowners. A new FHFA director could help homeowners by forgiving mortgage debt, which would help the still-struggling housing market, and a lot of individuals and families, and would provide a boost to the economy as a whole.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL), one of the most controversial Tea Party freshmen in Congress, lost his bid for re-election Tuesday night.

Despite moving to a new, more-Republican district (Florida’s 18th congressional district), West was edged by challenger Patrick Murphy (D) by 2,500 votes.

During his two-year tenure in Congress, West earned a reputation as not only one of the House’s most brash members, but also its top Islamophobe.

Here are 16 of the most contentious moments of his congressional career:

1. Progressives are “communists”: At a town hall meeting in April, West said that 80 House Democrats were “members of the Communist Party.” He later clarified that the 80 Democrats he was speaking about were those in the Progressive Caucus.

2. Opposed early voting as an “entitlement”: In an interview with ThinkProgress, West objected to early voting in Florida because “people see it as an entitlement.” He ultimately lost his seat, in part, because of high Democratic early voting turnout.

3. Said Obama’s campaign slogan had a “Marxist-Socialist” meaning: West found hidden meaning in Obama’s “Forward” slogan. “They want to bring out an old Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist theme for their campaign called “Forward”.”

4. Obama’s DREAM initiative was a voter fraud conspiracy: Appearing on Fox News, West saw a more nefarious effort beneath Obama’s deferred action immigration policy. “Is this one of those backdoor opportunities to allow people in the next five months to get the opportunity to vote?” he asked.

5. Food stamps “enslave the American people”: West lamented the rise in available food stamps for Americans. “That’s not how you empower the American people,” West said. “That’s how you enslave the American people.”

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