Forget ideology.  Forget vision.  Forget patriotism.  Forget pragmatism.  For the elected Republican officials in Washington, now more than ever before, everything is about votes.  There are only two sides to that coin: Keeping the votes of the diminishing Republican faithful and denying even more votes for Democrats driven by policy successes.

Certainly, some in the GOP are principled men and women, but these officials likely qualify as an endangered species.  This is a party that is in serious trouble.  A few with at least a modicum of courage recognize this is true.  Sen. George Voinovich spells the Republican problem out in five letters: S O U T H.  Sen. Mitch McConnell spoke memorably, and somewhat disconsolately this year in terms of the GOP as a "regional" party.  Some of slightly higher principles do what they believe is right regardless of the party line, like Sen. Richard Lugar and his attitudes toward lifting the Cuban embargo.  A very few, most notably former Rep. Tom Davis, just got fed up and quit.  Sen. Arlen Specter simply jumped ship.

For the Republicans who are left, electoral politics has become a zero-sum game.  The most reliable Republican voters are a base of, well, knuckleheads.  These are the 28% nationally who are certain Pres. Obama is not a natural-born American citizen and the 71% within the party who view the imbecilic ice queen Sarah Palin with favor.  For a Republican to stay in office, it has become essential to pander to voters who can't keep a rational thought in their head.  It has also become necessary to obstruct everything Democrats attempt at a national level, not on principle so much as to deny the Democrats any further gains.

Interestingly, the Democratic agenda makes it possible to both pander to the hardcore base and blockade social progress at the same time.  House GOP unanimity against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and near GOP unanimity in the Senate was an absurd joke.  Anyone with common sense knew that without massive government action, this country, and the world at large, was headed to a devastating depression.  In the short term, however, it was easier to appear to be fiscally responsible to the local yokels and save the problem of explaining away the success of the policy for another day, which now seems to be approaching.

On unionization, large swaths of American business pumped lobbying dollars into the anti-check card campaign, but even without that impetus, Republicans in office know that the more unionization in this country, the more reliably Democratic votes will result.  This is why Pseudo President Bush would not let Transportation Security Administration employees unionize - there is no more reliably Democratic voting base than unionized government employees.

Everyone in the Beltway with half a brain knows how badly our health care system is in need of reform.  Even the GOP admitted this in today's radio address.  But the whole idea of "getting government bureaucrats between you and your doctor" is a blatant canard, especially to someone like me who has dealt with HMO coverage for years.  If 40+ million Americans wake up one day able to go to a doctor when they are sick, who is going to take credit for this miracle on the campaign trail?  Eric Cantor??

The big one coming down the pike is immigration reform.  With guys like Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner leading the reverse suicide charge awhile back, the GOP ceded the Latino vote to the Democrats for the next 30 years at least.  Playing to the xenophobic nationalism of the radical right is simultaneously the perfect cover for trying to prevent several million more voters from swelling this demographic already decidedly in favor of Democrats.

But the trends are clear.  Unions will gain power, if nothing else, through proper enforcement of existing laws and regulations to permit organizing without employers' improper interference.  Any pro-unionization reform beyond that is gravy.  There will be health care reform of some kind.  Immigration reform in 2010 is also a near certainty.  There will be plenty of protestations, obstacles, and half-a-loaf approaches to these and other issues, many raised by Blue Dog Democrats (the ultimate in "cross-over vehicles" for 2009) but for Democrats who supported the stimulus package, things are already starting to pan out.

Eventually, supporting these and other game-changing reforms, like greater consumer protections in the financial services market, will be seen as a solid political strategy (there is really no reason for the over-abundance of caution in these areas, but that's life).  Meanwhile, demographics will continue to work against Republicans, who insist on being too White, too old, too rural and too Southern to matter much on the national stage.  Though he "gimmicked-up" his denial of the Commerce Secretary appointment based on Rahm Emanuel's involvement in the process, Sen. Judd Gregg saw the writing on the wall in the 2010 Census.  Next year's census will be highly inclusive, then followed up by Congressional redistricting which will be driven in largest part by Democrats or non-partisan methods - both anathemas to "the permanent Republican majority" in which prior redistricting played a huge role.  Small wonder he didn't want to preside over that large of a GOP coffin nail.

The icing on the cake for Democrats is that the GOP base and many of those they have voted into office are remarkably flawed humans.  This, however, should come as no surprise in hindsight.  We're talking about people who are among the most sexually repressed, violence indulging, religiously narrow and socially dysfunctional humans we could ever hope not to share a plane ride with - hypocrisy and psychological conflict rule their day.  This is the only way to explain the relentless wave of scandals tagged with names like Vitter, Foley, Craig, Sanford, Ensign, DeLay and so many others.  They are all birds of a feather.  If they weren't so dangerous, I could pity them.

At this point for elected Republicans, politics is a rear-guard action aimed at keeping their jobs.  There is no agenda to advance.  Republicans have no practical alternative other than to suck up (down?) to the lowest of the low, throw roadblocks in front of every useful idea, or both.  It's the only way I know of to understand how a political party can be "pro-life" and "pro-torture" simultaneously, though I'm open for other suggestions. 

There will be plenty of places in the country (nowhere I want to live) that will perpetually return legislators like Senators DeMint, Sessions and Inhofe to office, but not enough to dominate this country's governance.  While some Republican office holders truly share the beliefs of their radicalized constituents, the cynic in me says that the recent, nearly inexplicable anti-everything Republican gymnastics and ineptitude are actually easy to understand, if we tilt the picture in the right way.

Like so many things in modern society, it all comes down to the numbers.