Commentary points out that the McCain camp has been blaming pretty much everyone but themselves for their loss, and that's the God's honest truth. McCain had a number of opportunities to put the heat on Obama, such as the bailout vote when he could have voted against the bill and ended up on the winning side of that issue with most Americans. There was also the timid handling of Obama's close associates, especially a systematic failure to run hard-hitting advertising about Obama's actions in Kenya on behalf of Ralia Odinga. You don't have to really look at his campaign's list of inactions and missed opportunities to realize that Sarah Palin is just being used as a very convenient scapegoat by many of his campaign staffers who are the ones who really dropped the ball here.

Now that Obama is President-elect, maybe there will be an opportunity for the Republican Party to find itself. It's probably a good thing that Ron Paul didn't get the nomination (and possibly rejected simply on guilt-by-association grounds) as men like him can pick up the pieces in Congress over the next two years. If the Republicans are smart--which so far they've proved that they aren't--they'll appoint Sarah Palin to stand in as Senator for Alaska if she's willing as a replacement for Ted Stevens (should Bush have the good sense to not kill the last shreds of the national party's reputation by pardoning him) and offer Ron Paul a leading position in the House (minority leader or speaker if they retake the majority).

Lastly, it's amazing that pragmatists like the neocons at the National Review have the ear of anyone in the Republican Party anymore. The success of Proposition 8 in California is a thorough rebuke of their pragmatism. What it shows is that there still is a lot of support for socially conservative ideas, and that the real problem is that the Republican Party in all of its pragmatism has failed to find candidates who are willing and capable of getting them to the voters who will support them. In this case, the influx of minority voters helped tremendously in California to see Prop. 8 get passed, and if the Republicans hadn't sacrificed their limited government credentials these last 8 years, they might be able to woo minority voters on issues they can relate to like legal system abuses of power.

Update: Another thing that occurred to me is that McCain probably would have been torn to shreds without Palin helping him with conservatives. Right off the bat, I would say that he would have lost both South Carolina and Georgia had he nominated Giuliani or Romney. Montana, Missouri and the Dakotas probably would have been lost as well, dropping McCain from 162 electoral college votes down to 130. It certainly would not have gained him anywhere except perhaps in Indiana. In fact, it's more likely that Palin prevented a Goldwater-style washout for McCain.