From a friend who previously lamented about the state of the Republican party:

Another article appeared today remarking on the grim future this current election forebodes for the Republican party. This time, the Washington Post takes up the topic I wrote to you on previously.

As I said before, the current disarray of the Republican Presidential field is a symptom of a much bigger problem – the party machine is breaking apart. All of the electoral success the Republican party has seen for the last 20 years was built on a ruthless machinery that engaged all the party cogs in one winning machine. The welds are not holding.
Or, as today’s article states:
“…there’s a huge crowd of self-described conservatives standing around the Republican elephant shouting “Do something!” But what they want the poor beast to do is very unclear. And it doesn’t take an expert in pachyderm psychology to know that if a big enough mob shouts at an elephant long enough, the most likely result will be a mindless stampede — in this case, either to general election defeat or to disastrously unconservative policies, or both.
Many Republican politicos still hope that one of the candidates may be an elephant tamer. I doubt it. The current circus shows that the ringleaders failed to build the circus tent correctly to begin with.
Beyond the grim possibility of losing the 2008 election, this spectacle may have implications for decades to come. What if the Democrats put on a show worth watching, while the Republican elephant makes fans wants to cover their eyes? What if the crowds stop attending? Worse- what if they find another show to patronize?