No matter how you voted, no matter how you feel about the result, America made history last Tuesday. Even if you're a strictly conservative Republican you should take pride in the fact that, finally anybody can grow up to be President of America. Heck, even Juan Williams over on Fox News got choked up.

Now that our latest "national nightmare" is over let's take a big breath and see if we can make any sense of it.

Nearly two year ago when Obama, Clinton, McCain and the others announced their campaigns, a Democratic victory seemed certain. No matter what people said publicly, most of them saw the Bush Administration as a failure. We were sick of the Iraq War and ready to end it. Between that and Katrina it just didn't seem possible that a Republican could be elected President, even if God were running as one.

By the spring, the surge in Iraq was working and John McCain, who supported the war, was winning the nomination in flight. A Republican loss suddenly didn't seem a sure thing.

Then gas went up to $4 a gallon and the economy replaced the war as issue number one. In September a close race broke open when the economy practically collapsed while McCain said it was basically sound. After that, the Democrats couldn't lose with Charles Manson at the top of the ticket.

When John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate it reminded me of who that party rallied around George W. eight year ago. In both cases you had an unqualified person running for high office with the full support of the Republican Party.

You may remember some time back I said that the Republicans didn't deserve to win the election because of the way they supported George W. in 2000. They knew he wasn't qualified, but ran him anyway because winning the election meant more to them than putting the best person in office. They did it again with Ms. Palin.

All during the campaign we were told that she had more executive experience than Obama, and was qualified to become President if something happened to McCain. Now that it's over the Republicans have changed their tune. Now they have deiced to blame her for losing the election.

Now Republicans are falling all over themselves to say nasty things about her. Now they call her diva, whack job and hillbilly. They tell us that she spent much more than $150,000 on clothes for her and her family. They tell us that she didn't know that Africa was a continent instead of one country.

I refer to these people as "they" because they chose to attack Palin anonymously. They not only are willing to blame her for the loss, they don't even have the courage to do it out in the open.

In the end, it wasn't Sarah Palin who lost this election. This was an uphill battle for the Republicans from the start. They lost because George W. was one of theirs and they couldn't escape that. They lost because the country could no longer believe them when they said the McCain-Palin ticket was the best hope for the country. That old routine just wouldn't work again.