Writing from South Carolina last January about the race for the Republican presidential nomination, New York Times columnist David Brooks observed:"Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. Weve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme."I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return."That observation seemed all the more apt after Tuesday's election. Demography was destiny. Mitt Romney, drawing support most notably from the shrinking white portion of the electorate, came up short. Barack Obama, drawing support from a rainbow coalition of blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, gays, women and others, won another four years in the White House.There will be no restoration, no taking "our country back," no return to the 1950s. Not this year. Not any year.With its undisguised hostility to non-traditional Americans, the Republican Party has painted itself into a corner. It has to find a way out or resign itself to increasing irrelevancy.That would be bad for the party--and for the nation. America needs two vibrant, viable parties offering different approaches to our problems and challenges. Someone needs to take the GOP by the scruff of its neck and drag it into the 21st Century.

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