table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=7 style=vertical-align:top;trtd width=80 align=center valign=topfont style=font-size:85%;font-family:arial,sans-serif/font/tdtd valign=top class=jfont style=font-size:85%;font-family:arial,sans-serifbr /div style=padding-top:0.8em;img alt= height=1 width=1 //divdiv class=lha href=http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=tamp;fd=Ramp;usg=AFQjCNFzHDpKxbKXOgJ_Lj7m5CWiiwz3Iwamp;url=http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/131002.htmlb[Joseph A. Palermo is Associate Professor of American History at California b/b/b/abr /font size=-1bfont color=#6f6f6fHistory News Network/font/b/fontbr /font size=-1The Republicans didn#39;t have to quot;nationalizequot; the midterm elections because this time around the quot;localquot; politics are playing out in their bfavor/b./fontbr /font size=-1 class=p/fontbr /font class=p size=-1a class=p href=http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1amp;ned=usamp;ncl=dV4FewzaAYRxeXMnobrband morenbsp;raquo;/b/nobr/a/font/div/font/td/tr/table