Why the G.O.P. Needs to Lose For a Third Time

Morsi’s out, Zimmerman’s free, Spitzer’s back, Snowden’s still in Moscow, and the G.O.P. is still dominated by right-wing true believers. Those were the headlines during my two weeks off, and, in the interest of maintaining the holiday spirit for another day or two, I’m going to focus on the last one. (Note: if you haven’t read Jelani Cobb’s moving post on the Zimmerman acquittal, read that first.)

If you are anything like me, I suspect that part of you—the dark, cynical part you’d rather not acknowledge—has rather enjoyed the Republican Party’s two-decade-long descent into wacky, quasi-religious, know-nothing nativism. From Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, let’s be honest—the Party’s recent history has resembled a dark comedy scripted by Aaron Sorkin and designed to insure a Democratic hegemony in the Oval Office. Who knows? If it hadn’t been for the intervention of the Supreme Court in 2000, the G.O.P. could conceivably have lost six Presidential elections in a row, instead of four out of six.

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