I’m working on a couple of sober posts on the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, and at some point will get around to the unresolved conflicts in the Donkey Party as well. We’ll have additional commentary on the policy impact of the election, on the shape of the electorate, on new faces (particularly women!) in Washington, and on what he need to do with the nation’s electoral rules and machinery.
But first, as commenter Karen suggested last night: given the length and bitterness of this campaign, readers deserve a thread devoted to pure, honest schadenfreude. Feel free to wallow in the misery of the Opposing Army; the revealed folly of its endless and interminable predictions of Total Victory; the dashing of its dreams of Paul Ryan running the country from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue; the stubborn refusal of the New Deal and Great Society legacies to lay down and die. Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Jen Rubin, Michael Barone, Peggy Noonan, George Will, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and the entire Fox News Network: surely they deserve a moment of clear-eyed mockery before we move on!
Then we can get back to calm analysis and treating conservatives as fellow-citizens with patriotic sentiments and honest motives, if they give us a chance.
