George Bush Jr and George Bush Sr.

Profits, stocks, dividends soared. But the Reagan Democrats of industrial America—who paid the price in lost jobs and shuttered plants from the $10 trillion in trade deficits America has run since George H. W. Bush—have now gone home to the party of their fathers. And they are not coming back.

Fourth, rather than bringing the troops home after our Cold War triumph and telling our allies the free rides were over, Bush I and II went crusading for a “New World Order” to “end tyranny in our world.”

After three wars and half a dozen interventions, we are bankrupt at home and hated abroad. And Americans, sick of seeing their best and bravest brought home to Dover or being fitted at Walter Reed for prosthetic arms and legs, have twice voted for an ant-interventionist president.

Yet, one matter over which the GOP had no control is the triumph of the counterculture.

What might be called the old morality—that abortion is the killing of an unborn child, an abomination, that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral—has been relegated by scores of millions, especially among the young, to the dark ages of the 20th century.

Americans who adhere to this traditional morality, rooted in Christian tradition and Biblical truth, are culturally outgunned and may now be outnumbered. They may have lost America for good.

What can the GOP do about this? Nothing.

What will the GOP do? Probably what comes naturally—declare itself “tolerant” and respectful of all views, pro-life and pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-traditional marriage.

Reality must be faced. A generation has grown up rejecting the truths that its grandparents lived. And while population growth among our native born halted decades ago, scores of millions have come in from abroad to fill the empty spaces. And they are still coming. They like what Big Government has to offer, and seem uninterested in what the GOP has to sell.

In that case, you try harder to sell your product, change your product, or go out of business.

Yet, if the GOP changes its product, it may just lose its most loyal customers.

When the obituary of the party is written, the subhead will likely read “Dead of Self-inflicted Wounds.”