Details are now leaking out about what it was like in the final hours of the Romney campaign: Adviser: Romney ‘Shellshocked’ by Loss.

Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan’s wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

“There’s nothing worse than when you think you’re going to win, and you don’t,” said another adviser. “It was like a sucker punch.”

Their emotion was visible on their faces when they walked on stage after Romney finished his remarks, which Romney had hastily composed, knowing he had to say something.

Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

“He was shellshocked,” one adviser said of Romney.

Mitt Romney pulled all the credit cards and made his campaign staff pay for their own rides home on Tuesday evening.

BOSTON — From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

President Obama also had a message for his staff, with a slightly different tone.

If the MP4 videos above don’t work, here are the lower resolution versions:

After all the GOP attempts to hamper voting by the elderly and minorities in this election, Karl Rove tells the Fox News audience that Mitt Romney lost because the Obama campaign “suppressed the vote.”

Technically, Mr. Rove is correct. Obama did suppress the vote for Romney, by convincing people to vote for him instead of Romney.

An absolutely diabolical plot. There oughtta be a law.

Related:
Infographic: DARVO (The Abusers’ Strategy)

We’re not going to have a long drawn-out Bush vs. Gore-style battle this time in Florida; the Romney camp (what’s left of it) has given up hope: Romney Team: We Lost Florida.

Mitt Romney’s senior adviser in Florida has given up on the state. 
“The numbers in Florida show this was winnable,” Brett Doster said in a statement obtained by the Miami Herald. “We thought based on our polling and range of organization that we had done what we needed to win. Obviously, we didn’t, and for that I, and every other operative in Florida has a sick feeling that we left something on the table.

That means the final electoral college count will be 332 Obama, 206 Romney — qualifying as an electoral landslide of major proportions.

Courtesy of the always-diverting Free Republic, this is definitely our hilariously insane wingnut rant of the day, as one of the Freepers is PREPARING FOR POST OBAMA ELECTION.

Today, I instructed my wife to prepare for post Obama election by doing the following:

1. Close out our bank accounts, checking accounts, savings account.

2. Eliminate and exist from all medical service programs, insurance, and destroy all medical records and ID numbers.

3. Destroy and toss all cell phones.

4. Take out and smash all black boxes in our vehicles. Will put on the road my 69 mustaang.

5. Cut up all credit cards and call to stop all transactions.

6. Call and stop propane gas shipments, will now burn firewood. Already have more than 500 cord stacked as a backup.

7. Buy only the bare necessaities and pay all bills with a money order.

8. Plan all travel areas, use back roads to avoid TSA agents.

9. Do not use landline telephone only in an emergency.

10. Call and turn off Direct TV.

11. End all computer web services.

12. Build a gate at the end of our driveway and keep it locked. Inform all friends and relatives to call first prior to a visit so the gate can be unlocked.

13. Get involved more heavily with local Tea Party to establish a third party, no more money to the GOP under any circumstance!

The list may be updated to include other more secret actions that the government need not know about here!

I hope he remembered to instruct wifey to lay in a supply of toilet paper. It’s the little things that matter most in a sealed bunker.

(h/t: Lidane.)

Taking a look around the wingnut blogosphere today, we find the partisan parrots all telling each other not to give in to despair, that America will — somehow — survive another four years of Barack Obama.

Strange, isn’t it, that only a few days ago the very same people were absolutely convinced that the re-election of Obama would lead to the total destruction of the US?

Meanwhile, Romney campaign advisers are turning to the next order of business — assigning blame.

“They ran a 20th century campaign in the 21st century,” said one Romney bundler, frustrated that the campaign made assumptions about the youth vote and voter intensity that didn’t pan out. “The anger is that they were entrusted to do certain things. It’s not like they were paid a $5,000 retainer to get a few dozen articles in an inside-the-Beltway paper. This is the major leagues.”

Another Republican outside the Romney campaign but privy to its thinking described the defeat as a complete pummeling, with Senate losses adding salt to the wound.

Romney supporters point to a series of brash statements made by advisers that seem out of touch with reality in retrospect. Inside the Beltway, Republicans trained their fire on senior Romney advisers like Ed Gillespie and political director Rich Beeson for appearances on last weekend’s Sunday shows. Gillespie said the electoral map was expanding, and Beeson predicted a 300 electoral vote win for Romney.

“There were a lot of Republicans who were on calls that the campaign was having led to believe we had shots in Pennsylvania and Minnesota,” one Republican operative supporting Romney said. “I think Republicans are split right now between confused and shocked, and also I think they are wondering did the Romney campaign have numbers we didn’t have.”

In starker terms, the source questioned: “Was last week a head fake, or were they just not that smart?”