Let's look at what we've become before we think we know what to do about it

The other day, I quoted at length from a piece by Daren Jonescu at The American Thinker.  He has another essential one up today.  And, again, do read the entire thing, but here are some money paragraphs that warrant their own further dissemination:

America is not a center-right country, whatever that means.  It is -- notwithstanding its still-sane minority (which includes almost everyone reading this) -- a socialist-leaning nation that lags behind the rest of the progressive world only due to a slight residual guilt complex regarding all that old Constitution stuff.  The events of the past couple of days suggest that even that little bugaboo has now been largely overcome by the majority, for whom most inhibitions about accepting their chains -- and chaining their neighbors -- are now gone.

And:

"Mitt Romney was only the nominee because of a thin primary field."  Phooey.  He was the nominee because the entire GOP establishment threw everything it had at all the other candidates, in order to guarantee that it would get the candidate most likely to succumb to their advice and direction.  As of September 2012, Romney was the only candidate left in the primary field whom no one had ever described as a conservative, let alone a constitutionalist.  That, in short, is why he was the nominee.

(3) "Republicans need a candidate who can appeal to moderates."  See point 1 above.  Appealing to moderates means apologizing to voters for not being quite as forward-looking as Barack Obama.  It is to set oneself up as the inferior choice.  It is to presume that the moderates are with the Democrat candidate by default, and must be peeled off by stealth.

And:

This election was the last chance to spare America the final degradation of ceasing to be a constitutional republic altogether.  That battle has now been lost.  The things most needed now are clarity and forthrightness.  The danger most imminent now is that, having forsaken the principles of liberty, the nation will simply forget that those principles ever existed.

That, my friends, is the America of November 2012.