Now, while I do wish our president-elect the best — and his cabinet looks pretty good, so far — I do wonder if things have gone a little batty while I was away. Witness this ad for an Obama commemorative plate:

His “confident smile” and “kind eyes”? Get a room, America. Get a room.

After a resounding electoral defeat, in which voters in this once-red state rejected Republicans McCain, Schaffer, and Musgrave, the Colorado Republican Party will undoubtedly be asking themselves, “Why did we lose?”

I want to let them know that they lost the vote of many former supporters (including myself) because they have chosen to embrace the Religious Right.

I voted Republican in 1996, 2000, and 2004. I believe in limited government, individual rights, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms - positions that one normally associates with Republicans.

But I didn’t vote for a single Republican in 2008. I’ve become increasingly alienated by the Republicans” embrace of the religious “social conservative” agenda, including attempts to ban abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and gay marriage.

Hsieh is just the kind of voter the GOP needs, in the place it needs him. He’s one of the “upscale” voters Charlie Cook writes about here, that the GOP has alienated.

How does the GOP win him back? Couldn’t tell you yet. But it doesn’t involve Sarah Palin.

The Mormon church, and other hate-mongering churches, don’t get to attack minorities in the public square and then shout freedom of speech or freedom of religion when people fight back (with more speech, that is).

These people ought to be held accountable.

(HT: Sullivan)

OK, that last one isn’t a major thread in the post-election analysis. But it’s the one I want to address, since I threw out the name.

Here’s a post on that topic:

Okay, unlike others in the Republican party, I’m willing to throw the social conservatives and the evangelicals under the bus if that’s the only way to elect a free market, strong-on-defense president.

So Ryan Sager has labored mightily in his own mind and brought forth as a suggestion …Michael Bloomberg??!! What is this guy smoking? (Not cigarettes, obviously, since he’s a fan of Bloomberg and lives in New York.) Do I need to even remind anyone that this is a high-tax, high-spending, pro rent control, pro-regulation, pro gun control, nanny stater? And he’s a life long Democrat. Wow, I don’t think that Princeton education did Sager much good. And Mr. Sager, you think Bloomberg is doing such a great job in NYC. Similar to what Frum asks about Palin, let’s see what kind of a job he does in an economy with tax revenues from Wall Street completely drying up. It’s going to make being governor of Alaska (with the falling oil prices) look like a cake walk!

This is truly the stupidest column I’ve ever read, but maybe Allah or somebody smart like that can explain it to me.

First off, I didn’t go to Princeton, so perhaps that explains my idiocy. Second, I’m not going to argue with anyone who says Mike Bloomberg isn’t a libertarian. Point conceded. But here’s why I use his name for a stand-in for what I’m talking about…

At base, this is probably a pretty similar case as to why I (and a lot of other libertarian-ish types) would support Rudy Giuliani for the GOP nomination — or, at least, would have in 2007-2008. There are very few politicians out there with anything like a libertarian profile who are in any position to run for president. (Folks can make the case about Sarah Palin, but she did not appeal to the libertarian part of the GOP base at all during the election; she was, you may remember, lying about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere, and she’s based what little appeal she has to anyone almost solely on her pro-life and pro-small-town, anti-big-city Jews — err, I mean, “media elite” — credentials. No sale as far as I’m concerned.) Given that, the available menu of candidates is, shall we say, a bit short.

So, what does a libertarian go looking for? In short, someone who is a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.

Let’s go back to Giuliani: check and check. I think, over the course of the primary campaign, however, he went way too far in trying to out-anti-immigrant Mitt Romney; he also sold out his support of civil unions in an attempt to out-social-conservative Mitt Romney, and he threw in his foreign-policy lot with the most extreme neoconservatives. I’m not saying I’d never consider him again. But I’m interested in a thorough search for who else might be out there.

And, so, this brings me to Bloomberg. Again, not a libertarian. Smoking ban: bad. Trans fat ban: bad. Anti-gun lawsuits: bad. His fiscal policy? There, despite some relatively minor tax increases, I’d still call him a fiscal conservative. He’s pulled us through some tight budget times with a minimum of pain. Overall, a pretty admirable job on the fiscal front, so far; we’ll see what happens going forward. On education, he’s not been supportive of vouchers, unfortunately, but he’s been heroic in his support of charter schools. On social issues, like abortion and gay marriage — well, he shares my positions; I wouldn’t expect much of the Republican base to like them. On foreign policy, he’d probably be a lot more internationalist than, say, Bush or McCain. Again, I’m fine with this — tough sell to the base.

Of course, a real-life Bloomberg run probably wouldn’t have to go through the Republican base. It would likely be a third party run. And, if successful, such a run could put an end to the GOP.

I wish there were a strong, libertarian-type candidate out there — especially one with the right cultural profile. As in: western. A Republican Brian Schweitzer. Of course, the fact that the GOP has no such candidate is just one of many symptoms of how and why we’re utterly and totally screwed. (ed: You just described Palin! She’s a biblical literalist who hates everyone from a place with a population north of 10,000! She’s not going to win us back an increasingly urban Colorado, for instance! Get the hell back to Kaus’s blog!)

Given the reality we’re faced with, I don’t think anyone ought to turn up his or her nose at Bloomberg just yet. That said, I’m not trying to drive the Bloomberg bandwagon, here. I’m describing a type. Other suggestions are more than welcome. And, of course, 2012 isn’t exactly right around the corner. But I can’t help myself!

What does it all add up to? A party resting on an ever-shrinking geographic base: Dixie. Look at John McCain’s likely final 173 electoral votes: 113 of them come from the South (defined as the 11 states of the old Confederacy plus Kentucky and Oklahoma). That’s 65 percent of his electoral vote - and much of the rest comes from the sparsely populated Plains states.

With even Virginia and North Carolina trending blue this cycle (voting for Obama and voting out Republican senators), the need to expand this base is apparent.

So where does the Republican Party go from here? Three options present themselves at this early date…

…those are, broadly speaking: The Palin Plan, The Huckabee Diet, and The Bloomberg Scenario. Of course, my sympathies lie with the nasal New York-Boston Jew riding to the rescue of the Party of Palin. (If the Italian New York City mayor with a lisp couldn’t do it, damn it, this quixotic candidate can!)

I’m not saying it would have to be Bloomberg (once upon a time, Mitt Romney could have been the moderate, business-friendly, technocratic Republican — but he threw that all away to become the favorite conservative of National Review and Hugh Hewitt), but it would work best with a reformer/wonk from the West or Northeast.

It’s way too early to get a sense of which way things will go, but let’s just say it’s less than encouraging that this Rasmussen survey finds Sarah Palin topping the list of Republicans’ choices for president in 2012 — with Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney coming in behind her.

It’s way too early for 2012 speculation (though, man would that feel good). But if die-hard Republicans are unable to get over their (in many cases creepily sexual) infatuation with Palin — and are unable to understand what makes her so repulsive to non-die-hard Republicans — it will be a long four years.

It was homophobic African-American voters who put the bigoted proposition, stripping gay Californians of the right to marry, over the top. If Obama had bothered to expend one cent of political capital on the issue, he probably could have swayed the outcome. And the polls made it clear how close things were. But he didn’t.

Voters should remember his cowardice on this issue. He’s got a term to make it up.

In a few days, or weeks, or months, the self-flagellation will begin. We know this about McCain. He gets his hand caught in the cookie jar (Keating Five, Confederate flag, 2008 campaign), and then he self-flagellates (campaign-finance reform, apologizing to reporters, TBD).

It will be amusing to see, but no one should forgive him. No one should let him live down this disgusting campaign.

He made his choices. And history should remember him for what he is: a principle-less, irresponsible, hate-mongering little man. Good riddence, and may he now slink away from the national scene in disgrace.

• Any attempt to reintroduce the so-called “Fairness Doctrine.” While I understand some in Congress might be interested in this, I’d be surprised to see the Obama administration make it a priority. It would sow a lot of division in the country without achieving anything substantial for the Democrats. After all, in today’s communications environment (Internet, satellite radio, etc.), it’s not like they could actually achieve what they want here: shutting up conservative talk radio. Obama has said he’s not in favor of reimposing the Fairness Doctrine, but he hasn’t said he’d veto such a bill if Congress sends it to him. He should veto it.
• Any sort of “card-check” legislation. Unions want to make it easier to pressure workers to unionize, eliminating secret-ballot elections and instead triggering a union when enough workers have been leaned on to fill out a card. Hopefully the less-than-60 margin in the Senate will force Democrats to compromise on something far short of this. But organized labor is waiting for its payoff, and an Obama administration is going to be eager to give them something. Unionization is tremendously destructive to the economy, and, on one of my pet topics, this would also be a disaster for charter schools (which Obama says he supports). Conservatives should fight this with everything they have.
• Installing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the EPA. The guy is a nut and a conspiracy theorist (OK, maybe those are the same thing). It’s not that I’d expect to like any Obama EPA head, but he’d be a very bad appointment.

Those are just off the top of my head. There will, I’m sure, be more.

(On the plus side, I find the choice of Rahm Emanuel comforting. For all his Kumbaya talk, if Obama’s campaign taught us anything it’s that he’s a ruthlessly effective executive. And anyone who thought Obama would be weak on Israel, I just don’t see that happening when he’s flanked by Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel.)