So what won the US midterms - sanity or fear?

And while you don't have the Republican Congressional leadership out there directly claiming Obama is Stalin reincarnate, what did they do to moderate the Tea Party fringe? What did they do for the cause of reasonableness and dialogue? Very little it would seem - they let the fringe loose on the community because they stood to benefit.

So, if that is fear, was there a sanity option?

There are definitely still those who err on the side of genuine policy debate in the US system, and this includes both politicians and members of the public. But of course, because you don't see these people, or even splinter groups of them, out there howling down others in support of for their middle-of-the-road causes, they get much less attention. These people are not out there personally villifying those who think differently from them. But they do exist and many of them ran in the midterms.

So, all in all, there was a decent choice available on Tuesday between sanity and fear.

Which won? Was it sanity by a canter, or did base fear rear its head, breathe its fire and scorch all in its way?

With a few key races left undecided, it seems most likely now that the Democratic side will hold 52 of the 100 Senate seats, keeping control of that chamber, but along the way loosing two-to-one among the 37 seats up this election. Meanwhile, down in the House of Representatives, the Republican side have enjoyed the most significant turn around since World War II, if not before, gaining a majority with 239 seats versus 186 for the Democrats, with a further 10 still up in the air.

And these results are on what may be a midterm record voter turnout of over 41 per cent.

On the face of it then it seems fear won, and if you listen to the Tea Party rhetoric you would be excused for thinking so, but they are wrong.

If we take just one slice of the Republican success story - the list of 24 Republican Senate winners - and dig a little deeper, we actually see a very mixed result when it comes to the Tea Party contribution.

Yes, you have high-profile new Tea Party figures in the Senate like Rand Paul (Kentucky), Marco Rubio (Florida), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) and Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), but equally, many failed to make the list - think, Sharron Angle who flopped against Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid in Nevada, the weird and wonderful Christine "I'm Not A Witch" O'Donnell (Delaware) and John Raese (Virginia), along with likely losses in Alaska and Colorado.

The Alaska race is possibly the most telling of all. There you have the extraordinary situation where a "write-in candidate", someone whose name is not even printed on the ballot but who is literally written-in by voters when they're in the booth, is likely to beat the Tea Party candidate (who was on the ballot!). A write-in candidate hasn't won a national race since 1954 and the Alaskan write-in candidate is, wait for it, the moderate Republican the Tea Party defeated in the primary. And remember this is Sarah Palin's home state!

But the real thing with this list of Tea Party disasters is that the non-Democrat side of US politics should have won the lot and probably would have with moderate, run-of-the-mill Republican candidates. If they had, Obama would today be facing a fully Republican Congress.