Frank Rich delivers a brutal analysis of the Republican Party in the NY Times today.

The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,” he was the first to correctly call the election.

While the GOP has become largely a Southern regional party that’s funded by big business on the one hand and religious fundamentalists on the other, it’s advocated policies that further ensure a growing distance with mainstream America. The GOP is not going away, but it is being artificially propped up by the wealth of its core supporters and decades of successful messaging to make radical reactionary views seem normative of the American mainstream to the press. Of course voters are clearly seeing through this.

Anything resembling a competent first two years by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress should ensure the continued regionalization of the Republican Party. How they respond will be interesting to see. John McCain’s response to this dynamic of progressive was to go negative and get nasty. Sarah Palin clearly took that ball and ran with it. But the American people didn’t buy what they were selling. Can the GOP adjust? Maybe, but nothing we’ve seen from this nasty, brutish party over the last sixteen years suggests that they’re inclined to do so.