Well well...the McCain burden has been lifted, Governor Palin is on her own, and speaking her own mind, let’s see what tomorrow will bring.
One thing to consider, even in McCain’s loss, he still held about 95% of the vote that Bush got from 2004. Bush got 62M, Mccain got around 58.5M as of now, that may grow a bit when all is said and done. Still the 2nd most votes a Republican has ever gotten. For all the effort the media put in to elect Obama, and in the end it paid off, there were still at least 59M or so who saw through their facade, who didn’t buy into the hype. Who can be counted on as a potential base of support going forward.
Compare McCain’s 95% retention rate to other past instances when a party lost the WH or the incumbent was defeated.
In 1992, Bush41 held about 82% of the vote he got in 1988. He plummetted from 48M in 88 to 39M in 92.
In 1980 Carter held about 85% of the vote from 76. He dropped from 41M to 35.5M.
In 1976 Ford held about 82%. He dropped from the 47M Nixon got in 72 to 39M.
Humprhey in 68 dropped almost 30% from Johnson in 64. From 47M to 34M.
The point is that historically speaking, McCain did a pretty remarkable job in holding on to the votes that the party had from the last election. Most times a party loses power/an incumbent loses, they bleed a much greater maount of votes than we did this year.
I attribute a good portion of McCain’s retention to Palin. If he had put Lieberman or Ridge on the ticket, he’d have been down in the 80-85% range of Bush41, Carter and Ford, not in th 95% he got.