CHAMBLISS WINS
(now with an emerging-conventional-wisdom update)

I'd react, but I reacted a month before it happened, when the outcome was already obvious.

And please, fanboys, spare me the Palin cheerleading -- Chambliss would have won with or without her. (You too, Lucianne.)

****

UPDATE: I see that one of the giddy fanboys is the winning candidate himself. Let me be among the first to get in a cheap snigger at the specific language Chambliss uses, even though TBogg will undoubtedly say something funnier:

Chambliss: Palin 'allowed us to peak'

Fresh off his runoff victory Tuesday night, Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss credited Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with firing up his base.

"I can't overstate the impact she had down here," Chambliss said during an interview Wednesday morning on Fox News.

"When she walks in a room, folks just explode," he added....

Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.

OK, let me be a bit more grown-up: I suspect that "Palin gave Chambliss a big win" is going to become a building block of the Master Palin Narrative, so that when she tries for -- and wins -- the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, pundits will treat this as her equivalent of Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic convention speech, the moment when she first showed the political world outside Alaska that she's Got It. I'm a bit dubious: I'm sure she was some help, but let's not overlook the OMUHGAWD SCARY DEMOCRATS GONNA TAKE ALL MUH GUNS!!! factor.* I can't help noticing that, according to an AP story published just before runoff day, white males already constituted 36% of early voters (as opposed to 27% in November) prior to Palin's campaign appearances in Georgia. So I think the sunrise is being credit to the rooster. (And, yeah, "rooster" does seem a bit odd in this context.)

*See, e.g., this.