Rush Limbaugh tried to explain Mitt Romney's loss to President Obama on his Wednesday show.
"Small things beat big things yesterday," he said. "Conservatism ... did not lose last night ... it is practically impossible to beat Santa Claus. People are not going to vote against Santa Claus, especially if the alternative is being your own Santa Claus."
He said Romney would have been a great president.
"He may have not been the most optimal candidate, but he's a fine man," he said. "He would have been great for this country."
Romney, he said, had promoted "traditional" values of hard work, which had been rejected: "In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins?"
He dismissed the idea, floated by many conservatives, that the GOP had become too white and insular.
"We have plenty of highly achieved minorities in our party!" he said.
Limbaugh then turned to the exit poll data, which clearly had caused concern.
"I went to bed last night thinking, 'we're outnumbered,'" he said. "I went to bed last night thinking we'd lost the country. I don't know how else you look at this. The first wave of exit polls came in at five o'clock. I looked at it, and I said ... 'this is utter BS, and if it isn't, then we've lost the country.'"