Like in 2006 the media didn’t acknowledge it till it smacked them in the face (because GOP success is a given and Democrats winning is the anomaly, or something) but any hedging on the 2014 midterms being a referendum on GOP nincompoopery is a joke.

The GOP has continued to rely on a strategy of Benghazi, IRS, NRA, defend the “real” Americans, even when everybody but their base sees it as political malfeasance. The Republican Governors Association brought in $6 million because big carbon extraction companies are doubling down on their defense of their ability to foul rivers and drinking water. They need GOP governors to look the other way when people are poisoned.

The racist base precludes immigration reform. Pro-gun legislation must continue unabated no matter how many kids get killed. Anti-choice bills keep coming faster than courts can toss them.

Absolutely everyone except that magically dense base has figured out that when Republican politicians talk about jobs they’re only talking about their own because they haven’t done a damn thing to create one, and only have one fantasy strategy for that anyway – tax cuts for millionaires. I’m sure they’ll work this time.

Today’s Republicans can’t change, can’t evolve, can’t grow, can’t figure out that what they’ve been doing doesn’t work because they have cocooned themselves so deeply into their own self-perpetuating bullshit machinery that they cannot see reality at all. Those that get a glimpse enough to see imminent failure either (a) decide that its the message that is the problem, rather than the policy, or (b) are chastened from pursuing a new policy by the base that will eat them alive if they do.

No, the GOP is locked in at this point. They’ve created this monster that is the Republican primary voter. They pushed out reasonable people and kept feeding the outrage addicts jonesing for the next heady hit of why white people should run everything and stop feeling bad about that immutable fact. They’ve mainlined all of the GOP’s mind altering poisons to this point and there’s no methadone for it. They can’t change.

They can only be marginalized, ignored and left behind. And that’s what will happen in 2014. A country desperate for real governing will embrace the California model and give the Democrats as much a chance as gerrymandering will allow to do that governing.