The author failed to mention the Achilles heel of all good Dems and that is national security. If Obama screws up national security for one minute, the repubs are back in power for the next 25 years. Why do you think Obama is hedging his bets on torture, Gitmo and Afghanistan? Because he cannot afford to appear lame on defensive matters (a la Jimmy Carter).

I have contended for some time now that openly aknowledging that one is a Republican is tantamount to publicly professing to have a mental illness. What sane person can have lived through the last 8 years and still belong to the GOP? Current rethugs are mentally and emotionally unbalanced. I really think it is that simple.

I understand your plight and offer my full sympathies. I was struck by your closing comments in which you mention your core principles. But the only thing I hear Republicans utter is to "lower taxes" for the rich. Is there anythin else of note?

elect a Whig in 2012

Fifty-four Forty or Fight!

Mexican-Americans were well aware that while Mayor of San Diego, he and his wife were found to have in their employ an undocumented housekeeper. Some white voters were aware that Wilson, as a Senator from California, had lobbied to have those who'd done 90 days farm work included in the 1986 amnesty bill. Forty percent ended up getting green cards through this provision, though the bill was intended to allow longstanding residents who had established stable community ties to legalize their status.

It had the effect of causing Latinos to band together since white folks couldn't tell who was legal and who wasn't. I remember the tension in the run-up to the election. It also encouraged many Mexican nationals who had green cards to become US citizens to guarantee their right of abode in America. Finally, Prop 197, which denied services including schooling to illegal aliens, passed; although it was thrown out as un-constitutional. But the damage to the Republican Party in California has never been repaired.

So now the chickens have come home to roost, lured by the crys of "wolf! wolf!"

Demagoging those damn brown skins, homos, and (fill-in-the-blank non-mega rich WASPs), gerrymandering so badly as to make Gerry blush, running the economy into the ground, alienating the civilized world with neanderthal chest thumping, lying as public policy, morgaging our children's future for a few bucks, rolling back civil rights to pre-Dark Ages levels, illegal wars, torture.

Gee, what's the solution .. maybe more of the same? Greedy Old Perverts projecting their loathing onto others, that's change you can believe in!

The author appears reasonable, but still remains blinded by his party's propaganda. I'd happily engage a 'conservative' on the issues, but have yet to meet one that utilizes rational thought. Nobody wins when a significant percentage of the population is batshit insane.

I'd guess that, if any change is to come from within the party, it will have to come from embattled Republicans in moderate states. They've seen the writing on the wall, and they're going to have to strike out in a new direction in order to pull in votes and keep winning elections.

Ultimately the RNC is going to have to think up a new strategy in order to remain relevant, and it will have to put the screws to the racists and xenophobes in the Republican heartland. In other words, they'll have to start walking the walk, instead of just having their chairman attempt to talk the talk.

There's going to come a time when the Republican party is going to seem like a good place for smart and ambitious young latinos and blacks to make a political name for themselves. The Republican party may yet thrive by promising latinos the American dream of growing wealthy and keeping everything for themselves. Maybe they'll succeed in driving a wedge between poor and relatively richer black folks. At least, this is what I'm afraid of. I think it will be a good long time before they'll be able to pull it off though.

I am a reflexive liberal, who doesn't pile up all my political adversaries into monochromatic piles. Not all Dems are good and not all GOP-ers are evil.

I have many friends who are Republicans, and have lost several to death in the last decade. Some were mighty fine old warriors, whose shoes I am not fit to fill. One quit Harvard in WW2 to go fight in the South Pacific, riding in the back of a Douglass SBD. Others were folks who did similar things, and who sincerely thought they were doing the right thing by championing a smaller government, fiscally responsible, promoting individual freedom and tolerance.

To those who died and are no longer with us, I am secretly glad, because they didn't have to experience abandonment at the hands of the party they used to call home.

To those unfortunate enough to be living through the current maladies of their old party, I suggest they proactively abandon it and affiliate with the Libertarians, which while possessed of many a fruitcake, have the inclinations of the former Republican party. Put the GOP to death, folks. Let it die and move on. If it were a horse, we'd shoot it. This is just sad.

As many others have commented here, I'm surprised that Mr. Greener believes Senate Republicans treated soon-to-be-Justice Sotomayor with respect.

I agree with Dahlia Lithwick in Slate that both the Democrats and the Republicans blew it. The Dems had the chance to explain what's wrong with the rightward turn of the court, particularly on issues such as executive power. And it was Al Franken who raised this issue around the margins.

But the Republicans blew it even worse with regard to talking about race.

Women. Obama carried even married women in 2008, a demographic that helped Bush win in 2000 and 2004. But not in 2008. Most women got wise to the Republican party after eight years of rigid government inflexibility, ideology-driven anti-intellectualism, arrogant militarism, wasteful spending, and dedicated inaction in the face of national emergencies from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina.

And women saw the ugliness of the real visage behind the mask of "family values" -- the uncaring asphyxiation of real education for real kids through No Child Left Behind (which in fact left all children behind), the abandonment of the nation's young to ideological mythology in abstinence-only sex education, and the denial of any U.S. aid to foreign programs advocating any sort of family planning beyond abstinence.

And let's not forget abortion, which the GOP seized upon as its favorite wedge issue. Abortion is not a simple issue, but the GOP acts as if it's a one-answer question. The Republican "big tent" wasn't big enough to include pro-choicers, which is what most women are. What women perceive now is that the GOP is waging an unrelenting war on them and their right to control their own bodily functions. Women ask when the war on rape and incest and unwanted pregnancy is going to begin so that women will not need to have abortions. The GOP has no answers except to further alienate the female demographic with its preachy, rabid anti-choice agenda.

But probably the most nauseating aspect of the GOP is its unholy alliance with evangelical Christianity. The Republicans traded pseudo-empathic support for extremist religious fundamentalism to supply it with the votes it would need to elect legislators who would carry out the agenda of big business. As a result, the Republicans presided over the greatest mass transfer of wealth (from the poor and middle classes to the upper classes) ever seen in the history of the world. And the Terry Schiaivo affair showed how this extreme version of the Christian religion would seep into legislation if the Republicans were left in power.

Finally, Greener writes, "Some of the very same Democrats who had uttered some of the most vile, racist statements in the history of Congress became the beneficiaries of a block vote for any and all Democrats." I think Bill is thinking about the Southern Democrats, who became Southern Republicans as soon as the Democratic party got on the Civil Rights bus in the 1960s.

The Republican party has alienated women, minorities, non-Christians, and thinking people of all descriptions. It has truly been an equal-opportunity offender.