Kevin Drum on How To Learn To Stop Worrying and Whistle Past the GraveYard:

Parties rarely move to the center immediately after a big defeat. Usually it takes two or three before they finally get the message, and on that metric Republicans aren't due for a move to the center until sometime after 2012.

As for the tea parties, they're nothing new. We've seen similar conservative movements flower like clockwork during previous Democratic administrations, and they always burn themselves out after a few years. The tea party movement has ascended faster than its ancestors, partly because of lousy economic conditions and partly because of the power of modern media, and my guess is that their fall will be equally swift when it comes. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin simply aren't the kind of people who wear well. Their fifteen minutes aren't up yet, but they will be within a year or two.

(Emphasis supplied.) Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, the Dems are on their way to a crushing defeat in November. Apparently, people like the current crop of Dems "did not wear well" and their fall looks like it will be swift. But at least our discourse is civil. They can't take that away from us.

Speaking for me only