NAGOURNEY, STILL NOT GETTING IT

In today's New York Times, Adam Nagourney gives us another Republicans-are-back article. Given the existence of the filibuster, Fox News, a lily-livered Democratic congressional delegation, and a populace still so mesmerized by Reaganism thirty years after the fact that we weep at the thought of disturbing a hair on the head of every slimy fat cat who's ever denied us cancer coverage, I'd say Republicans were never away. But Nagourney is using conventional measurements. Yeah, the GOP is an aging regional party. But if half our elected Democrats still think Republicans are ten feet tall, what difference does it make?

How old-school is Nagourney's analysis? Well, he's still saying things like

They are still searching for new leaders and new ideas.

and

Finally, even though many Republicans have argued that the party needs new ideas to counter Mr. Obama, the overwhelming sentiment at the summit was that the conservative message of the past 30 years was as effective as ever.

Adam? This is ADHD America -- what do Republicans need new ideas for? The old core idea still works perefectly well: Democrats are going to kill you in your beds! And the most vicious ones will be hippies and Hispanics and Negroes!

It's going to be a low-turnout midterm election cycle, folks, and they have the motivated base. And I don't care if polls show that the GOP is still poorly regarded -- declare Democrats evil and who else but a Republican is going to be on most ballots opposing the Democrat?

The presidential election after that is a tough one for the GOP, but I believe more and more that Mitt Romney might just replicate Nixon's '68 strategy of persuading the knuckle-draggers that he's as big a hater as they are while also persuading the traditional-media mandarins that he's a seasoned and sensible centrist. We know he can talk out of both sides of his mouth -- now all he has to do is learn how to do it simultaneously and not just sequentially.

And Values Voter Summit superstar Carrie Prejean will probably place his nomination ... unless she's so miffed that he beat Sarah Palin in the primaries. (Assuming that's possible -- and let's hope it isn't possible, because Palin '12 is, needless to say, our best hope, and raises the possibility that Obama will be Nixon, i.e., the Nixon of the '72 election results.)