As for the Republicans, to claim that they are eternally “hopeless” is to misunderstand both the political ramifications of a two-party system, and the psychological aversion to continuing actions that result in continued defeat and devastation.

Our two-party system is an inevitable result of a “first past the post” electoral system for federal and virtually all state legislative bodies. There are ways around this inevitability as we can see in Canada, where a regional party (Bloc Quebecois) or a party strong mainly in urban areas (New Democrats) can survive, or in Great Britain, where the Liberal Democrats manage to survive because of the spasms of ideological rigidity from the two main parties (although they never get anywhere near the number of seats in Parliament when compared to the percentage of the national vote they win). But there is no sign of regional parties arising in the U.S., and the Democrats have not gone to ideological extremes as the Republicans have, so I don’t see a third party rising in the U.S. at this time.

Which means that, in a two party system where one of the parties is Center-Left and the other if Far-Right, the far-right party is going to eventually get electorally shellacked, and remain electorally shellacked, until it reforms itself and comes to its political senses.

Which means the Republicans will eventually, perhaps reluctantly, listen to voices like those of David Frum. As Frum points out in his article, polls show that almost half of those who identify themselves as Republican don’t agree with the extremist agenda currently being fulminated by the party’s leaders. So, Charles, David Frum is right to not give up on his party, and he (or someone like him) will eventually be vindicated.