Well, that was fun while it lasted. In essentials, the election is over now, a piece of yesterday’s news stale as the identity of the King of Rex, or the beer that was spilled at Bacchus. The carnival is closed, and now it’s our season of ashes.

We now know all we need to about the identity of the next president of the U.S. He/she will be black/white and a Republican/Democrat, but in either case will be a member in good standing of the Globalist party, whose platform includes the following planks:

1) American troops will remain in Iraq in the vain attempt to install a Western, pluralist democracy. Since this effort can be sabotaged at will by any of several fiercely combative sects when it suits their interest, and we can exercise next to no control over these parties, our men and women will remain in Iraq indefinitely. In a deepening recession that has already forced the U.S. government to pull out nearly every trick from its bag to maintain economic activity, we will continue to sluice tens of billions into this occupation”€”which was sold to Americans with the promise that it would “€œfund itself.”€ (Remember all that Iraqi oil we were planning to pump?)

2) Whoever is president will propose a lavish amnesty for existing illegal immigrants, all 12 million of them. By rewarding migrants who mocked our laws with one of the most valued commodities on earth”€”U.S. citizenship”€”we will guarantee an increased flow of new illegals. Perhaps this amnesty will come wrapped in some shiny paper that promises “€œimproved border security.”€ However:

3) There will be no attempt made to control the U.S. border with Mexico, even as terrorist groups continue to target our country. The much-vaunted border fence which Republicans fought to extend will not be funded. Nothing will be done to alter the mix or moderate the numbers of legal immigrants, the vast majority of whom are low-skill and less-educated”€”further depressing the wages of the native working class, even as U.S. manufacturing jobs continue to emigrate to China, and service jobs to India.

4) There will be no reliable pro-life appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. The best we can expect will be the likes of Harriet Myers; the worst, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Given the likelihood of all of the above, it is time for conservatives to focus on what we can plausibly hope to accomplish in the next four years, and it can be summed up in one word: Sabotage.

If we are able to hold enough seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, we might be able to stop a McCain or a Clinton amnesty, as we halted the Bush amnesty in 2007. While we can’t finish a border fence with a hostile president, we may be able to hold off on this final craven surrender of U.S. sovereignty. Maybe.

If enough pro-life senators survive the general election, we might hold onto the one-third required for filibuster. You know, the weapon that liberals threaten to wield every time a Republican appoints a strict constructionist. The one which for some reason I cannot fathom conservatives never use.

If we mobilize now in support of those senators we can trust”€”and make it clear why we are supporting them, and what we expect in return”€”we may be able to gain the leverage to make such a filibuster stick. In the case of a Democratic president, we could hold out for a more moderate justice than a triumphant Obama or Clinton would prefer (although of course we won’t have the clout to insist on anyone to the right of Souter).

If we face a victorious McCain, our chances are obviously better. We can apply the same ferocious scrutiny to any McCain appointee that withered Harriet Myers”€”and let McCain know in advance that this will happen, that the pro-life voters who ended up saddled with Souter, Kennedy, and O’Connor won’t be easily fooled. We must insist that if we are to be fooled by a nominee, it must be done with skill and subtlety”€”qualities the arrogant, bombastic John McCain notably lacks.  Faced with a Senate that wouldn’t approve whatever “moderate” hack McCain tried to appoint, he might very well leave the seat vacant. We could live with that.

It’s impossible to tell how likely we are to hold onto enough House seats to save the shreds of our sovereignty, or Senate seats to champion the sanctity of life. The next four years will be dry times for a conservative movement which has addled its brain with imperial fantasies, squandered unprecedented policy opportunities, and spilled vast quantities of blood in an utterly useless cause. As we walk through the desert in a Lent that lasts for four long years, we won’t have to mortify ourselves; events will prove penance enough. The America we try once again to govern four years from now will be poorer, deeper in debt, more crowded with unskilled workers who vote reflexively for the Left, and further along the road to moral decay. Gird your loins, and pass the locusts.