It’s not too early for members of the GOP to start blaming each other for Tuesday’s defeat — actually, rivals in McCain and Palin’s camps started weeks before the election — and from the sidelines it’s already making for some entertaining chatter. The very notion that the Alaskan governor could be the next face of the Republican party is sparking an extreme reaction. 

Fox News’ Carl Cameron reported yesterday that people in McCain’s camp swear that Palin did not know which countries are in NAFTA (the whole “North America” part might have tipped her off) or that Africa was a continent and not a country. And this from the people who have labeled the media as snarky and disrespectful in its coverage of McCain’s vice-presidential pick. 

What I’m hoping is that when the cannibals get done feeding on the clowns (“Does this taste funny to you?”) the deeper thinkers in the party will commence to contemplate their future. Some have already spoken of the unholy alliance between born-again, anti-intellectual red-meat reactionaries and the heirs of the “party of ideas” that arguably began with William Buckley. (That Buckley’s son was abandoned by the magazine his father started for having the temerity to endorse Obama — in a Tina Brown-edited, Barry Diller-owned publication no less — was one of the many ironies of conservatism’s collapse.) Do they have a common platform? And what might it look like?

One thing is obvious: it’s going to take more than hate. Simply saying no to whatever Obama and the Democratic congress proposes won’t work, not just because of the majority (not filibuster-proof but compelling enough to get some moderate Republicans to come along on key legislation) but because of the mood of the country. If people were as scared of taxes as Grover Norquist is, they would not have elected a candidate who pretty much guaranteed years of sacrifice, and all but promised financial hardship. 

Americans, it seems, don’t hate government: They hate government that doesn’t work, that abandons its citizens in the wake of natural disasters, and looks the other way when people profit off of man-made ones, whether it be Wall Street or Halliburton. As we return to a belief in our system, and our role in it, the right will have to come up with more than “nope” to counter hope, and try not to get deranged in the face of change. Rush Limbaugh has already vowed to be the voice of all those who did not vote for Obama. You know: losers.