Final Election Analysis

Jim Geraghty over at National Review Online, who've I've read religiously over the last few months, has a great final election piece. Some key quotes:

The only thing at stake in this election was the future of Western Civilization. In seemingly every conceivable way, John Kerry was the wrong man to lead this nation in the war we're in right now. His 1971 testimony, his defense-cutting record, his obsession with a "global test," his disturbing pride in the endorsements from unnamed foreign leaders, his naïve belief that the leaders of France and Germany are concerned with American security, his contradictory statements, suggesting he didn't grasp the stakes in Iraq...

That bearded punk quaking in a Pakistan cave who decided to play pundit last Friday — we're gonna dismantle him the way we've dismantled his organization. Yeah, we noticed no attacks in the U.S. between 9/11/01 and 11/03/04 — that didn't happen by accident. It happened because we're winning, and we're not going to let up until the word "al Qaeda" is as distant and meaningless as "Barbary pirates."

But before we modest folks — sitting at our laptops and our computers, just doing what we can in our corner of the world, and enjoying a particular political website — return to the vital world outside politics, let us relish this moment. Victories like this one — decisive, complete, powerful, and echoing around the globe — don't come along all that often. And there's plenty of credit to go around. Take a bow. You, me, and about 58,882,918 or so of our closest friends helped set the course of this nation for the next four years.