Not everyone in America was celebrating yesterday. For many Republicans, such as those at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, who booed when John McCain mentioned Barack Obama’s name, the outcome of the 2008 presidential contest was nothing short of a national catastrophe.

“It’s not over, it can’t be over,” cried one woman, as Mr McCain left the stage after making a concession speech in which his plea to the crowd to acknowledge Mr Obama’s historic victory received only brief and tepid applause.

To anyone who had followed the Republicans’ increasingly mean-spirited tirades against Mr Obama in recent weeks, the lack of graciousness was hardly surprising. This, after all, was a presidential candidate who had been portrayed by certain parts of the Right as a radical Islamic communist with terrorist sympathies whose connections with the liberal media had allowed him to brainwash millions of first-time American voters.

Many Republicans still refuse to believe that Mr Obama is American, arguing that his Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake.

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BACKGROUND

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While some of their fears may be justified – especially over Mr Obama’s plans to raise the top income tax band and capital gains taxes, his threat to bankrupt coal companies with carbon taxes, his friendship with a controversial Chicago pastor, and what appear to be his protectionist instincts – they had been warped into a paranoid fantasy by election night. Some believed that they were fighting the antiChrist.

Unlike the registered Arizonan Republicans who voted for Mr Obama, these Republicans either were not able to detect or simply refused to acknowledge the profound shift in the nation’s mood over recent months.

Many were astonished when Mr Obama made early gains, having believed that his commanding lead in the preelection polls was just another part of the liberal media’s conspiracy. Not that they did not attempt to protect themselves from the news: even as the television networks had Mr Obama ahead by 60 points, Mr McCain was shown on the video screens in the Biltmore as leading by 18 points.

“We’re not going to let the polls defeat us,” bellowed the Arizona Congressman, John Shadegg. “We’re going to defeat the polls, we’re going to win.”

As late as 8pm, after Pennsylvania had been lost, the crowd were still waving red pom-poms as the country music star John Rich performed his campaign song Raisin’ McCain, although “raisin’” sounded a lot like “razing”, which would perhaps have been more apt. And by dropping the “g” from “raising”, Rich’s song also brought to mind the image of a shrivelled grape – not ideal, when the candidate in question is 72 years old.

Over the next two hours the optimism finally disappeared. The crowd, which included a woman dressed in McCain/Palin banners, men in jeans and cowboy hats, Sarah Palin look-alikes, exhausted campaign staffers and children in Uncle Sam hats, just stared at the televisions and glugged Bud Light shipped in by the beer distribution company that is owned by Mr McCain’s wife, Cindy.

Then came Mr McCain’s concession speech, which was supposed to be limited to VIPs but ended up being a free-for-all. An hour later Mr Obama appeared on the screens live from Chicago and someone turned down the volume so that his historic speech was barely audible.

By midnight local time, the right-wing AM radio stations were abuzz with talk about how the nation had been stolen by socialists and how Republicans must fight the Democrats in Congress and the Senate to protect their way of life. Nowhere was the fear and loathing more evident than on Free Republic, the conservative web-site. Yesterday its lead story asked: “Do the 18 million aborted black babies support Obama?”

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