And I can’t believe I am saying that, but he appears to actually have seen what happened on Election Day and is now calling out the GOP on it:

If Republicans and conservatives don’t come to grips with what’s happened — and can’t develop an economic agenda moving forward that seems to incorporate lessons learned from what’s happened — then they could be back, politically, in 1933.

From 1933 to 1980, Republicans repeatedly failed to convince the country they were no longer the party of Herbert Hoover — the party, as it was perceived, of economic incompetence, austerity and recession (if not depression).

Only two Republicans won presidential elections in that half-century, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. Both were able to take the White House only because we were mired down in difficult wars, in Korea and Vietnam. And Ike and Nixon were unable — they didn’t really try — to change the generally liberal course of domestic and economic policy. The G.O.P.’s fate on Capitol Hill was worse. The party controlled Congress for only 4 of those 47 years.

That’s what happens when a depression begins on your watch and when you can’t offer a coherent explanation of how and why it occurred and what you are going to do differently. That’s what happens when instead of having such an explanation, you spend decades in quarrels between pragmatic but unimaginative moderates who seek to be better tax collectors for the liberal welfare state, and principled but fanciful conservatives who hope for a wholesale rejection of that welfare state. And the fact that there were many successful Republican governors in those years didn’t much change the party’s status nationally.

(emphasis added)

The GOP seems to be laying all their hopes in some GOP Governor lifting them from the jaws of permanent minority status. Their list of stars include names like Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty. But as Kristol even points out, having star  governors didn’t help the Republicans that much before.

Republicans have faces a serious blow. They risk being the party of a double header in economic depressions. The party paid big for the first one, and the possibility of another one will do only more damage to the party. We could end up seeing if our two party system of government can operate with only one party.