[media-credit name=’LUKAS KEAPPROTH/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]

Students for McCain and College Republicans were left visibly shaken by the election of Sen. Barack Obama as president of the United States Tuesday night.

The groups gathered as a crowd of about 60 at the Cabana Room in downtown Madison, where a feeling of anger came across after Fox News declared Obama the victor.

Members were not shocked by the outcome but were still disappointed. Students for McCain Co-chair Mark Bednar said he thinks Sen. John McCain was bound to lose from the moment George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2004, adding he “knew we were going to get killed.”

“No matter what Democrat was nominated, no matter what Republican was nominated, it was going to happen,” Bednar said. “The Republican was going to lose.”

Obama’s victory as well as Democratic domination in several congressional races leaves the president-elect in charge of a Congress entirely controlled by Democrats.

CR Chair Sara Mikolajczak, who teared up after Obama was announced the winner, said though “the world won’t fall apart,” the lack of government checked by partisan opposition does concern her.

“With a Democratic majority in Congress and a very liberal president, they’re going to be able to push through any agenda they want without anybody to check them on it,” Mikolajczak said. “And that scares the living daylights out of me.”

Bednar agreed with Mikolajczak and added House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, two firm liberals, will have an effect on Obama.

“I’m worried about the power-hungry individuals,” Bednar said. “I’m really scared that he’s not going to be able to say no to the ambitions of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.”

In the days and weeks preceding the election, CRs and Students for McCain did literature drops for McCain and several key state Assembly races.

CR Vice Chair Kristen Wall said doing so has allowed the groups to have a “presence” on campus.

“People know that we’re here, and in the past, that hasn’t necessarily been true,” Wall said. “We’ve worked hard over the past few months.”

From here, Mikolajczak believes the Republican Party needs to move more toward its conservative base.

She called Bush a “great Republican” but said he was far from a conservative in the fiscal sense since he grew government drastically.

“We need to get that back; we do need to work more toward the traditional values,” Mikolajczak said. “We don’t need to reinvent ourselves, but we need to get back to the basics of the Republican Party.”

Katie Nix, chair of Students for McCain in Wisconsin, said the state started to go toward Obama when the economic crisis began.

“John McCain is associated with George Bush, so he’s associated with the downturn of the economy,” Nix said. “But I don’t think it’s true. I think John McCain would definitely be better for the economy than Obama.”

From here on out, Mikolajczak said CRs would concentrate on more advocacy-based issues at both the state and national level.