Unfortunately, it looks like the forces of smear, slander, and threat have finally claimed their intended victim.  With Palin's announcement that she won't run for president, the election is essentially over.

The calculus is fairly simple: the media and GOP establishment want Romney to be the nominee.  Once a progressive is at the head of the Republican ticket, low turnout for Republicans will hand a narrow victory to Obama.

So here is how the election will go.  The media hasn't seriously opened up on Herman Cain, but most assuredly they will.  Cain has been in business for decades, and the liberal media will troll through every relationship, every business deal, every word he has ever spoken.  If that fails, the lies will start.  To see evidence of this, we need not look at far as Palin.  Rick Perry, another progressive, was attacked for something that someone painted on a rock on land his family leased out.  That narrative will be used to attack both Perry and Cain -- Perry for having "allowed" it and Cain for making a big deal over "nothing."  Both narratives will be forwarded, potentially in the same program.  Once the liberal media goes through Cain's past with a fine-toothed comb, they will doubtless find disgruntled business adversaries, accusations of infidelity, and more.

If Palin had been in the race, the smear tactics would have failed, as the establishment and media threw everything they could possibly throw to get her out of the race.  Who knows what her personal reasons, in her heart of hearts, were for not running?  Perhaps she feared for the safety of her family.  At any rate, there is no other conservative that has as much of a head start on the slander as Palin did.

All of the personal attacks will be done to assure that Romney gets the nomination.  The GOP bigwigs will do it because they feel it's Romney's "turn."  The media will do it because Romney will be far easier to defeat than a Tea Party candidate.  Because Palin has withdrawn, her endorsement will be of limited value, as she has drawn most of her influence from the mortal fear the establishment and liberals had of her becoming president.  Without that fear, her power will be practically inconsequential.

The propulsion of Romney to the nomination is already in full swing, as evidenced by the trivial "scandals" plaguing the news cycle about Perry, Cain, Bachmann, and everyone else who is a threat to Romney.  At the same time, the media is being absolutely kind-hearted to Romney himself.

Once Romney wins the nomination, the liberal media will open up on him just as they opened up on McCain.  Prior to McCain winning the 2008 nomination, he was the darling of the liberal media.  But after McCain took the nomination, everything changed.

Unfortunately, Palin's withdrawal has taught the media that this works.  Romney will receive the same treatment.  Everything the media has stored up on Romney will be released in calculated dribbles to keep the news cycle always focused on the latest Romney scandal.  Even Romney's religion will be used to paint him as an extremist radical fundamentalist.

Furthermore, Obama will eviscerate Romney in the debates.  When the subject of health care comes up, Obama will challenge Romney, who will have to reiterate the lame excuse for the statist intrusion he signed into law in Massachusetts.  Obama will also be able to point to Romney's support of Brady and other gun control bills, state-run health care, and any number of other progressive-statist stances Romney has taken, or vacillated in and out of, in the past.  Obama doubtless has an excellent research team, and they will be in full force to try to destroy Romney.  This will suppress the voter turnout.

This was the goal of the Democrat party in 2008, and it remains the goal in 2012.  In 2008 the Democrats dodged a bullet because they hadn't counted on a Palin VP nomination galvanizing a dispirited Republican party.  Without Palin, or another charismatic authentic conservative, Obama would have swept the election in a landslide.  Romney choosing a conservative this time won't work because the liberal media have found a foolproof way of destroying anyone they want to.  Palin won't work for Romney, either, as she will be painted as not wanting the presidency; in fact, Palin's withdrawal from the race has given her opponents considerable artillery-sized ammunition.

The net result will be a narrow reelection of Obama for another four years.  The only possible positive outcome would be a conservative-libertarian legislature and a total deadlock in government.  If the Democrats manage to take back the House and hold the Senate, everything we saw in the first four Obama years will be put on steroids, and America as we know it will cease to exist, buried under an avalanche of socialism.

This has always been the goal of the left.  With a projected billion dollars to work on all of these local races, Obama will finally have the chance to make his socialist dream a reality.

However, that Obama get another four years as an avowed Marxist is perhaps better than handing the presidency to a progressive Republican who would continue Obama's statist goals in stealth.  Perhaps another four years of misery will finally wake up America to the utter failure that socialism is.  Perhaps America hasn't suffered enough punishment to change the system.  I wonder if it will be another four or four hundred years before people finally get it.