WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
The problem for Republicans is that they actually believed the comforting alternate reality they concocted for themselves within their political terrarium. Consequently, they fashioned a tone-deaf message warmly received in angry-white, rich-Republican enclaves but out-of-sync with the "47 percent" they haughtily dismissed, the Hispanics they encouraged to "self-deport," the Blacks they maligned with "dog-whistle" racism, the women they alienated with degrading paternalism, the gays they discriminated against, the unions they tried to shut down, the military personnel whose war they ignored, and the youth whose futures they menaced. Reassured by predictions of victory by pandering political hacks, Republicans were blindsided by the predictable electoral backlash when these constituencies braved the long lines Republicans created at the polls in an attempt to disenfranchise them. It didn't help that Republicans nominated a ticket epitomizing the very source of the problems stressing the population: a ruthless, rich 1-Percenter and an intransigent Washington gridlocker.
Having painted themselves into policy corners based largely on biblical morality and base-serving principles, Republicans will have a very difficult time recanting in order to adapt to the changing demographic realities, popular attitudes and compelling needs within the body politic.
One of the startling revelations of the 2012 election was the inefficacy of Big Money on the right in buying votes. Adelson, the Kochs and other big-bucks contributors saw their huge investments come to naught. That's not to say Big Money isn't important -- Obama raised prodigious sums -- but it does say that the injection of large sums of money in causes that run against the grain of the majority of the electorate cannot be counted on to sway the outcome.
The 2012 election also confirmed the signal given in the 2008 election, namely that the swing of the political pendulum reached its extreme rightward displacement during the Bush 43 administration, and has now begun moving back inexorably leftward toward the center. This is good news, provided the pendulum does not swing irretrievably too far left beyond center.
Consequently, the Republican party, presently locked in on the losing side of the demographic shift, could go the way of the Federalists or Whigs. Conceivably, its disappearance could open the way for a successful third-party movement on the radical left, ironically leaving the Democrats as the party of the right in a political landscape in which the center shifted sharply leftward.
(For more, go to my blog or my book, "The Predicament, How did it happen? How bad is it? The case for radical change now!)