Shell-shocked Republicans remain in denial, their shattered dreams gone with the wind

Outside the Republican walled kingdom of denial and delusion, everyone else could see the once clever and ruthless party was behaving in an obtuse and outmoded way that spelled doom. The GOP put up a candidate no one liked or understood and ran a campaign no one liked or understood – a campaign animated by the idea that indolent, grasping serfs must be kept down, even if it meant creating barriers to letting them vote.

Although Stuart Stevens, the Romney strategist, now claims Romney “captured the imagination of millions” and ran “with a natural grace”, there was very little chance the awkward gazillionaire was ever going to be president. Yet strangely, Republicans are still gobsmacked by their loss, grasping at straws such as Hurricane Sandy as an excuse.

Astonishment

Some GOP House members continue to try to wrestle the president over the fiscal cliff. Romney wanders in a daze, his hair not perfectly gelled. And his campaign advisers continue to express astonishment that a disastrous campaign, convention and candidate, as well as a lack of familiarity with what Stevens dismissively calls “whiz-bang turnout technologies”, could lead to defeat.

Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?

Republicans know they’re in trouble when George W Bush emerges as the party’s moral voice. The former president lectured the GOP last Tuesday about being more “benevolent” toward immigrants.

As Eva Longoria supersedes Karl Rove as a power player, Republicans act as shell-shocked as the Southern gentry overrun by Yankee carpetbaggers in Gone with the Wind. As the movie eulogised: “Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, of master and of slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a civilisation gone with the wind.”

Gun sales surge

Gun sales have burgeoned since the president’s re-election, with Black Friday weapons purchases setting records as the dead-enders rush to arm themselves.

But history will no doubt record that withering Republicans were finally wiped from the earth in 2016 when the relentless (and rested) Conquistadora Hillary marched in, General Bill on a horse behind her, and finished them off.