All one can say is "Hallelujah!"

g.

We can hope this separation leads to divorce. But, as long as Palin says she's a Repub, other Christian right-wing nuts will suffer the same delusion. I really don't see this alliance fracturing as described. It's more like the reasonable people have left the GOP and the can of nuts are still rattling around, rubbing salt in each other's wounds.

I think the Christian-Republican-right wing nutters are on a Darwinian road to self destruction.  Unable to adapt, they will go the way of the Whigs and the National Republicans.  Thank-you God, with all my heart.

Our parents project the repressed feelings of their childhood upon us and, unaware, blame us for the things that once happened to them. Alice Miller

Well, there are some things they can all agree on.

Like guns, for example. And the threat from those (foreign, brown) people.

My personal fantasy is that they try to patch up the GOP divides, so they have one of those friendly get-togethers where they egg each other's paranoia to a high level, comparing the guns they carry to face this existential threat, etc.

And some prankster tosses some firecrackers in the room.

When the smoke clears, perhaps a more sensible GOP will result.

After all, the real threat to 'conservative interests' is not too much government power, but too little. How could such a philosophy long co-exist with the libertarian and small government wings of the Republican Party?

I don't see how it can, but it sounds like it works great with the neo-conservative wing of the GOP.  And hating on minority groups doesn't conflict at all with either the theocon or the neocon goals (in some ways it enhances them, in fact), so they can keep that plank.  Throw in a populist economic platform as you throw out the libertarians and small government folks and you might just have a recipe for making the Republicans a national party again.

Of course, you end up with something that starts looking a helluva lot like fascism too.  Especially if you keep the close ties to the Chamber of Commerce wing of the party as you throw out the libertarians and the small government folks.

(We would also find out how many of the "libertarians" in the GOP really are liberty-minded and how many of them are in fact "glibertarians" who only care about liberty when it's their own ox being gored.  I suspect that most of the remaining self-proclaimed "libertarians" in the GOP are of this pernicious breed and as long as the newly empowered Federal Government keeps their hands off the guns, they'll be okay with it.)

The Left and the Right exist, and have always existed because sometimes either side is right or wrong.

The piece is correct in that the Republicans lost because they proved themselves incompetent. The wing of the party that hates governments also thought government and competence doesn't matter (see Brownie, see regulatory oversight, or lack there of). as long as their buddies were getting rich, all must be OK.

Wrong.

So far, the way Obama has handled his campaign and the transition, competence seems to be showing up as pretty important and I think Americans are going to come to like and expect it.

Conservatives will regain power when they show they have a better idea and not simply regurgitating ideological know-nothingness.

And that will happen eventually.