One of the more popular conservative blogs is redstate.com. The founder and chief cook and bottle washer, Erick Erickson, is way to the right of Rick Perry. During the run-up to the primaries he was wildly against Romney. On Nov. 8, 2011, he wrote an editorial that is definitely worth reading if you are interested in knowing what conservatives were thinking a year ago. In part, he wrote:

"Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.

I've been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. But during the past year, Erickson's hatred of Obama was so great that he yelled himself hoarse against Obama, for example on July 18, 2012: he wrote: "Barack Obama's administration is filled with the ignorance of America you get from liberal academics" It's been like that almost every day all year.

But yesterday something new appeared: "When I wake up on Wednesday morning, I'm still going to have my wife. I'm still going to have my kids. I'm still going to have my family. And I'm still going to have my God. So will you." Later in the piece he said: "I'm not going to think the end of the world is upon us if my side loses." From someone who hates Obama with a passion and has railed against him all year (to great cheering from the comments section), this doesn't seem like an announcement of imminent victory.

In a Washington Post interview, Republican strategist Karl Rove had his Mene mene tekel upharsin moment when he blamed Romney's loss on the storm, even before the results are known, when he said: "If you hadn't had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy." He seems to have forgotten that Romney has been saying all those things for 2 years. Surely 3 more days didn't matter. What he meant was the storm gave Obama a Commander-in-Chief test and he passed.