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If the Republicans hope to survive as a party they need to rethink their entire identity.  For the last fourteen years they have increasingly depended on the fundamentalist wing of American Protestantism.  To cater to this constituency they have adopted an anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant, anti-diversity attitude that has corroded the politics of the entire nation.  Proposing a woman for the Vice Presidency who believes that the world was created about 6000 years ago, and that humans walked the earth with dinosaurs, a woman who demonstrated a depth of ignorance about the wider world that startled everyone, this demonstrated the intellectual bankruptcy of the party that, in my youth, was a party of the educated elite.

Reagan appointed as Secretary of Interior James Watts who, in his heart, did not believe there was any point in conservation because the End Times were upon us.  When called upon to preserve the California stands of redwoods that were in danger (and now lost) he famously replied, "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all."

Fundamentalism inevitably leads to bad public policy decisions, and twists policy debates into tests of faith.  They respond to the politics of hate and fear, and force those politics on all the rest of us.  (Can you picture today's Republican Party standing bravely against a long-established practice of slavery?  Not likely.)  This year the US citizenry finally got sick of it.  If the Republican Party wants to preserve its status as a national political party it has to rid itself of its status as a fundamentalist Christian political party.  If they cannot because the "fundies" are too deeply imbedded, then a new party has to emerge that can speak for the progressive conservatives who love this nation and see hope for the future.  If the Republicans no longer speak to the moderates and even to the liberals who work in good faith for this nation, then the Republicans are the useless appendix of politics. 

I believe we need a healthy two-party system in America, but the Republicans have a lot of work to do before they will be a part of that mix.