And while we are on the subject of who is and is not to blame for Obama being president, etc…let us just remember that if some of the more outspoken critics on the right who were livid about Harriet Miers, outraged about Dubai and beside themselves over immigration had paused to ponder the subprime lending situation, things might have been different.

Too often the right has allowed itself to attack its own in an effort to find some kind of nonexistent purity, meanwhile the Democrats have slowly but surely garnered more and more support. They picked up young people tired of the social conservatives lecturing them. They picked up hispanics who found the hardliner’s rhetoric to be insulting. They picked up working people who felt that Republicans only cared about the rich. And so on.

Republicans need to learn to get out of their own way. They also need to spend as much time and energy criticizing Democrats as they do each other.