The Good News: the events of the last week have united the GOP.

More Good News: the Republican Party will be back someday (probably sooner rather than later).

The Bad News: this development came at a frightful price.

What really happened to Barack Obama? Or, how did the era of bipartisanship, cool competence, and common-sense solutions come to a conclusion before we could even settle in our seats (one of my buddies was out getting popcorn and missed it completely).

TWO POSSIBLE SCENARIOS:

It was all a big lie. Obama never intended to be different. He is just another politician--more gifted than most, but at his core a prevaricator and soulless opportunist.

MORE LIKELY: he really believed a lot of his rhetoric--but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum.

He got rolled by his own party. The 380-pound veteran bull-rushed the Rookie. The sharks just inhaled the guppy.

We are reminded that five years ago, none of us had ever heard of this man. Five years ago he was a less-than-spectacular state senator whom most of the people in his own state did not know.

We are reminded that we convinced ourselves that this man was somehow so blessed with superhuman powers that he would overcome his deficiencies of experience.

Okay. We were wrong.

Side Note (and this is important): why were so many of us (Republicans) hoping against hope that this new man really was somebody totally different?

Simple. For those of us who can be honest with ourselves and objectively discuss our Grand Old Party, we know that we squandered the golden opportunity. After forty years of Democratic Party leadership based on fatally flawed assumptions, the American people came to see modern liberalism as a well-meaning ideal in the abstract but a recipe for disaster in practice.

And what did we do when our turn came? In general, we were even less responsible than our predecessors. Drunk with power and delusions of grandeur, we broke the bank. During our twelve-year window to right the course, we made absolutely no headway toward saving the nation that we love so dearly.

We are crushed. We are mortified. We are sick with disappointment in ourselves--and we lash out.

Some of us try to blame the media. Some of us blame the perfidy of the opposition. Some of us try to blame one another.

It was us. All of us. We did it to ourselves.

Okay, so some of us who understand how disastrous our missed opportunity really is were hoping against hope that the mysterious Obama was something different than a Nancy Pelosi Democrat. He said he was--and we desperately wanted to believe him. We were hoping that he could somehow slip in the Democratic backdoor and restore good sense to our national dialogue regardless of his party affiliation.

Looking back, none of that seems very logical right now.

The Bottom Line: Obama is NOT the Devil. We should still support our President. Let's don't go off the deep end and start spewing insane accusations and conspiracies. But those of us who have been clinging to a fantasy world for the past few months need to shake it off and get back in the game.

Okay. We are in a mess of our own making. We cannot count on any significant help from this president (at least not in the foreseeable future). Let's figure out where to go from here.