Brent Bozell

We hear much talk now about the Republican Party trying to reinvent itself, fixing its "brand," facing an "identity crisis" or entering a period of internecine war. I'm skeptical about all this. We knew where the Republicans were coming from in the primaries, with a phalanx of middle-aged, rich white guys as candidates. All they had to offer was the same discredited mantra of tax cuts, theocracy and fear, with perhaps the exception of the entertaining libertarian Ron Paul. John McCain emerged as the perfect vessel for this exhausted, intellectually bankrupt yet madly power-hungry political party.

In the wake of a crushing defeat, several bigwigs are meeting at the Virginia estate of Brent Bozell, including "prominent conservatives" such as Grover Norquist — he of the lust to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub — and the religious extremist Tony Perkins. Same old, same old. The reality is that the Republicans have been reduced to a Southern white regional party, with some appeal in Southernized white rural areas elsewhere and the rural white libertarian West. This was brought home in a remarkable map in the New York Times, showing party gains in 2008 vs. 2004.

It's not just that the party's limited bag of ideas have been shown to hold frauds, and has finally been soundly rejected by the public. It's not just that the politics of hysteria and hate don't work now. This is a party totally out of step with the country, which is more diverse and urbanized than ever — even suburban voters recognized their essentially urban issues this time — and becoming more so in the future. This is a party whose ruling creeds are incapable of dealing with a complex modern society or the multi-layered challenges of the 21st century. And whose hidden creeds — policy crafted to ensure a plutocracy — were exposed in the financial crisis.