Andrew Sullivan is spot on in talking about why the Republicans won the mid terms, and what this should mean

I've been reading with some disbelief all sorts of proposals for president Bush's next two years. Here's the only one that matters: win the war. If we can rid the world of Saddam Hussein and see Iran's dictators pushed to the brink, then an entirely new set of circumstances prevails in the world. What the president needs to focus on now is disarming Saddam. This election wasn't a mandate for tax simplification or welfare reform (however important those two things are). It was a vote of support for victory. If Bush lets Saddam wriggle through the gaping U.N. net, and lets al Qaeda off the hook, then he will deserve to be defeated in 2004. Getting the war right is paramount. Everything else will follow. Nothing else, in comparison, matters.

That is not to say that the Republicans cannot have a partisan agenda as well, but it needs to be put in perspective. If it were not for September 11 and what followed, we would likely have the normal situation of the president's party losing congressional seats at the mid term elections. These are very unusual times, and the voters knew that.