After the Election, Rebooting the Right – TIME

When a party suffers the kind of beating the Republicans have taken in the past two elections, the public has not rejected one of its factions. It has rejected the party as a whole. Voters have turned on pro-choice as well as pro-life Republicans, on Senators who favored amnesty and ones who fought it. Evidently voters did not believe that Republicans of any stripe offered solutions to the challenges America faces now.

You know that former girlfriend or boyfriend you dated for a while, that kind of stalked you after it was all over and refused to take your most vehement rejections at face value? That even throwing their clothes and stuff out a third-floor dorm window in a rainstorm while screaming “FUCK OFF OR I CALL THE CAMPUS SECRETIONS!!” didn’t convince them that It’s Really Over, I Mean It This Time?

That’s kind of like what’s happening in the Republican party right now. They refuse to hear the fat lady singing, they are not on speaking terms with The Hand, and they are convinced that by becoming even creepier and more unattractive, they’ll win you back, or at least force you to pick up the phone if only to say “stop calling me!”

In response to this Time story, which is like a lot of other analytical stories about how the Right can recover from the recent drubbing it received in the elections, voices on the right insist that only an even more rightward shift can save the party.

After the Election, Rebooting the Right – TIME

When a party suffers the kind of beating the Republicans have taken in the past two elections, the public has not rejected one of its factions. It has rejected the party as a whole. Voters have turned on pro-choice as well as pro-life Republicans, on Senators who favored amnesty and ones who fought it. Evidently voters did not believe that Republicans of any stripe offered solutions to the challenges America faces now.

Yet the Right is busy snatching victory in 2012 from the jaws of defeat in 2008 already.

In effect, they’ll will be spending some time flapping their hands around their heads and chanting “La! La! La! La! I can’t hear you!” Because in spite of losing a lot of national and regional races, they still think the “Rally Base!!11!!” button is connected to, like, a majority of actual voters.

They just don’t take Lose, or Fail, or NO!!! for an answer.