Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

What should Republicans do to get back in the game? It is clear that the election results, which came as a genuine shock to a raft of G.O.P. insiders and pros — astonishingly so, given the Intrade markets and the raft of nonpartisan polls and forecasts — has brought about a serious soul-searching in the party. It needs to be refined and reorganized in two areas.

When a party purges upstanding, problem-solving conservatives like Bob Bennett of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Bob Inglis of South Carolina, it has a big problem.

First is the nomination process, for both the presidential nomination and other offices from the U.S. Senate and the House on down. The G.O.P. has effectively been captured and dominated by its right-right wing — as opposed to its right wing or its center-right wing. When a party faces the spectacle of all its presidential candidates pledging in a primary debate that they would not accept a deal of $1 in taxes for $10 in budget cuts, and rejecting any candidate who acknowledges that scientists might have something to say about the climate, and when a party purges upstanding, problem-solving conservatives like Bob Bennett of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Bob Inglis of South Carolina, it has a big problem. At the presidential level, a move to more superdelegates, party leaders and elected officials, to temper the power of the lunatic fringe, would help (while keeping in mind that many of the right-right wingers have now been elected to office through the current process.)

Second, the party needs to abandon the tribal approach of the past four years — "if President Obama and Democrats are for it, we are against it (even if we were for it yesterday)." A party that puts its own short-term political advantage ahead of solving problems for the country, that puts obstruction ahead of compromise, will win elections only if it can manipulate the process or wait for catastrophe great enough that voters will accept any alternative. That kind of party will provide a huge weight around the neck of any presidential candidate, even a reasonable one. Moving to compromise on health reform implementation, election reform, campaign finance disclosure, fiscal restraint, infrastructure, financial regulation, housing policy and other areas, where traditional conservative and market-oriented approaches can be blended in to make centrist policy, would re-establish Republicans as a problem-solving, not radical, party.

Finally, the party needs to ignore the radicals like Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer who think that if only Republicans could get an immigration bill passed, all would be fine, Hispanics would come back in enough numbers to win 50.1%, and no other change is necessary. If I were a Democratic strategist, I would be elated if that approach prevailed.



