Remote undisclosed locations, we wonder?

OK, the Republicans have cerainly been whining since the election. It isn’t just Alberto Gonzales whining over not having a job, or Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth whining about unions (you must need viagra to join, I understand), or Rick Santorum whining about a moderate Republican supporting unions. Heck, we could sit here for days cataloguing the whines, but it is more fun looking at the list of right wing blogger fantasies (read: desperate lies), I suppose.

Still, I’m not the only one noticing the Republican whines. Here’s a bit from Paul Krugman, who notes the Republican whining, but also notes that they should be whining about their decisions over the last 40 years. From the New York Times:

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

. . .

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

That about pegs it. The Republicans took up the banner of the south in the 60’s and have kept blinders on ever since, not recognizing that America is getting more and more diverse, and more and more embracing of that diversity. Until Republicans realize that, they will be wandering in the wilderness, and a few are doing just that on the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, turning their backs on reality and running for some vacation resort. According to Politico, Republicans will be flying to Vegas and Switzerland and further in order to escape the reality of their loss of power that day. That’s it as I see it, whining and heads in the sand. No, they will not recognize their failed policies for a long, long time.