Meanwhile, 3.1 million real Joe the Plumbers across America are sending Barack Obama hundreds of millions of dollars, a torrent of cash that is helping to flush the GOP down the national toilet.

Right-wing hacks like Palin and Minn. Rep. Michele Bachman respond by doing the only thing they know how to do — attack, demonize and divide. They wave the flag like a cutlass, dividing the country up into "pro-America areas" and "anti-America" ones. But this old pseudo-patriotic trick that has served the GOP so well for so long doesn't work anymore. In a development that showed just how much the political landscape has changed, the attack dogs have been forced to apologize — something neither Bush nor his party nor conservative pundits ever did while they were trashing the country during the last eight years.

(...) The biggest damage was done by the Wall Street crisis, which happened just in time to tilt a close race toward Obama. But the economic meltdown was only one of the disasters for which the GOP is largely responsible. The war that was going to establish American hegemony forever turned out to be one of the worst foreign-policy blunders in our nation's history. The GOP's free-market idolatry led to the gravest financial crisis since the Depression. Its ideological insistence on cutting taxes for the richest Americans ran up a record deficit. Its embrace of torture and denial of due process assaulted the Constitution and eroded America's moral standing. Its doctrine of the "unitary executive" concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive branch. Its anti-scientific denial of global warming endangered the entire planet.

(...) But the problem isn't Bush, it's American conservatism itself — or at least the debased, intellectually bankrupt and utterly failed thing that American conservatism has become. For McCain to truly renounce Bush, he'd have to renounce the tax-cut ideologues who have bankrupted the country. He'd have to renounce the neoconservatives who led us into a catastrophic war. He'd have to renounce the culture-war attack dogs like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin who have coarsened conservatism's soul.

(...) The right wing is running as far away as it can get from Bush, but it still shares his beliefs. That's why it cannot and will not muster any real arguments against his policies.

(...)The "age" that our allegedly "center-right nation" has been "pushing hard against" is relativist, secular, progressive, scientific. And the "something large and stable" that's being swept away is tradition, patriotism, morality, family values, community, God. Noonan believes that conservative Americans have been waging a heroic battle for these Republican-associated virtues for decades. But she never quite reconciles the fact that the last 40-plus years have been dominated by Republican presidents and policies. Apparently "the age," like a Spenglerian villain, works its evil, values-corroding magic independently of whatever party is actually in power. For Noonan, of course, it has to — because if it didn't, then Republicans would be just as much or more to blame for the corrosion of tradition and morality as Democrats.

(...) The ludicrous hyperbole of such Jeremiads is self-refuting. Americans are desperate to fix their economy, end a ruinous, endless war and restore a sense of common purpose to civic life. As they face these challenging real-world goals, the abstract buzzwords trotted out by the right ring hollow.

The emptiness of these arguments reveals that American conservatism no longer has any purpose except perpetuating its own power and concentrating as much wealth as possible in the hands of the already wealthy. Its internal contradictions can no longer be glossed over. It poses as the guardian of tradition and morality, but its obeisance to an amoral free-market ideology is far more destructive of tradition than the regulated capitalism championed by liberals. It preaches small government, but insists that abortion rights, recreational drug use and gay marriage fall within the purview of the state.

(...) The GOP stands at a crossroads. Republicans can pretend that nothing has really changed, that this is still a "center-right" nation, and that only an ill-timed economic meltdown cost them the White House. This means leaving their party in the hands of the "movement conservatives" who have dominated the GOP for decades: the demagogues of reaction and resentment, the Christian rightists, the "values" voters, the anti-tax, anti-government zealots, the nativists, anti-rationalists and anti-secularists. The culmination of this approach would be to nominate Sarah Palin as their presidential candidate in 2016. Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.

If Republicans choose the first option, the GOP will be taking the first steps toward becoming a marginal party, one that will eventually end up an object of curiosity in the historical display case along with such extinct specimens as the Know-Nothing Party. If they choose the second, they will not only save their party, they could help heal the grievous wounds their divisive politics have inflicted on the country.

If conservatives' track record over the last 40 years is any guide, they will choose the first. And I won't be putting any flowers on their grave.

Maybe if you came out as a Republican, Joe, you'd have had a shot.