WHAT IS THIS "POST-ELECTORAL PERIOD" OF WHICH YOU SPEAK?

Steve Benen reads an Obama-bashing op-ed by Rick Santorum and responds in a way that suggests that he actually thinks the GOP is a political party, made up of men and women interest in governance -- or could be one except that it's just misguided:

... The goal, it seems, is to convince Americans that Obama isn't patriotic. If this sounds familiar, it's because the far-right embraced the same goal last year before the election.

But therein lies the point: this is a pre-election argument. The right-wing drive was to scare people into voting against Obama, an effort that obviously came up short. But now that Obama is in office, attacking his love of country is kind of silly. Conservatives are left sputtering that the President of the United States is somehow hostile to the United States. Come 2012, these clowns are still going to be running around questioning the sitting president's patriotism? Arguing that the man who's been working to make his country stronger doesn't really love the country? C'mon.

Note to the right: the election's over. You lost. Time to come up with some new smears.

The post is titled "A Pre-Election Mentality."

But here's the thing: to Republicans, there's no other kind of mentality because there's no such thing as post-election. There's pre-election-that's-coming-soon ... and then there's pre-election-that's-coming-up-years-from-now. That's it.

In essence, the Republican Party isn't a political party at all anymore -- it's really no different from an outside group that runs attack ads and hot-button-pushing campaigns meant to motivate voters on behalf of the GOP, except that it happens to be the GOP. Those outside groups, of course, exist solely to push hot buttons, not to govern -- and, increasingly, so does the GOP. Republicans apparently don't even want to be part of the running of the country. They're certainly not trying to broaden their appeal in any way that might make them a majority party again. Their sole purpose in life is to find wedge issues they hope they can use to make people angry at Democrats.

Republicans believe government is evil. They're not trying to make it work. And they won't let anyone else try, either.