Words can’t describe the feeling of watching Republicans madly stabbing each other in the back while their party goes down in a tidal wave election. It’s like the last scene of a crappy cartoon like Thundercats where the stupid villians spend their last miserable moments pointlessly attacking each other. Apparently a six year old can’t feel as good about hating the designated bad guys if they show some dignity at the end.

To put it another way, victory + schadenfreude = win.

“Lashing out at past Republican Congresses instead of Pelosi and Reid, and echoing your opponent’s attacks on you instead of attacking your opponent, and spending 150,000 hard dollars on designer clothes when congressional Republicans are struggling for money, and when your senior campaign staff are blaming each other for the loss in The New York Times [Magazine] 10 days before the election, you’re not doing much to energize your supporters. The fact is, when you’re the party standard-bearer, you have an obligation to fight to the finish. I think they can still win. But if they don’t think that, they need to look at how Bob Dole finished out his campaign in 1996 and not try to take down as many Republicans with them as they can. Instead of campaigning in Electoral College states, Dole was campaigning in places he knew he didn’t have a chance to beat Clinton, but where he could energize key House and Senate races. I think you’ll find these sentiments shared by MANY of my fellow Republican strategists.”

It won’t last. President Obama will give the rightwing a focus for their hate and fear. Even better, unlike us they won’t have to defend anything the government does. Every housefire and treed cat will be more evidence of Democrat perfidy. It will be, and I’m dead serious about this, wingnut blogger heaven. When stupid people to have their ideas put into practice, they have to explain why it failed (see vouchers, invading Iraq, privatizing government). In the future, with the Dems in charge of everything but the Idaho State Senate there won’t be much danger of that.

Meanwhile we liberals will discover that don’t all want the same thing. Your priority list won’t look like mine. Some people whose priorities conflict with some other people will declare that the other guys are as bad as the Republicans! 1!1!one!. Some bloggers will defend Obama’s inevitable bonehead moves, some of us won’t.

Thank god for the prospect of a very busy Obama DoJ.