How could it have happened? As the election returns showed a Barack Obama victory, my husband and I struggled to comprehend it. How could our fellow Americans re-elect a president whose policies made our country worse? Trillion-dollar deficits, weakness abroad, apologizing for America instead of promoting our ideals, class warfare, racial demagoguery, trampling religious liberty, federal control over one-seventh of our economy, pandering to women . . . the list goes on and on.

We listened to the pundits and the politicos debate how Obama managed to win: Obama ran a better campaign; Romney was too conservative; Romney was too liberal; Obama defined Romney as heartless and Romney didn’t respond early enough; Romney played it too safe after the first debate. There is some truth to all of it.

But only Fox News’ Brit Hume got to the root of it: Our country has fundamentally changed in the past few decades. Too many people are dependent on a government. I don’t just mean welfare recipients. How many career government employees vote for the candidate who promises to reduce the size and spending of government?

Go to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and you’d never know we were in an economic downturn. Shockingly, those counties overwhelmingly voted for Obama.

People look to government as the solution to myriad problems. Local governments want more money from the “state”; state governments want more money from the “feds.”

Does anyone remember that the money all comes from the same place — us? How can people think that sending our money through more and more layers of government bureaucracy will help anything?

As America is heading down the same path that has had disastrous results in Europe, 55 percent of women voted to re-elect the president who nearly doubled our federal debt in just four years.

When I heard the Obama campaign repeatedly pander to and insult the intelligence of women by focusing on birth control, I was certain women would reject him. Boy was I wrong. Frankly, just hearing the president talk about contraception from behind the presidential podium was horrifying to me. We’ve come a long way since George Washington.

As dangerous as Obama’s plans for our country are, the scariest part of this election is that we have an electorate that is so far removed from our founding that they would vote to re-elect him.

I am terrified of what the future holds for my children.