Republican Party

Wednesday, just two weeks after the election all but declared an end to white male dominance, yet another nail was driven into the wood-paneled coffin of old-fashioned America. Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, announced that even after eleventh-hour talks with union leaders, it would permanently cease operations. In other words, it's not just white males of a certain age that are on the endangered list but the delicious if strangely sealant-tasting white bread (and snacks)

Grover Norquist is losing his grip. It once seemed as if Washington's most powerful anti-tax crusader had the Republican Party firmly in hand. Signing Norquist's public pledge not to raise taxes was almost mandatory in GOP politics. Nine of the 10 candidates initially vying for the Republican presidential nomination, including Mitt Romney, signed on, as did candidates for local, state and national office. Some of them even signed Norquist's vow in public ceremonies, then gave him the originals to store in the vault of his group, Americans for Tax Freedom.

Orange County was once an instant synonym for Republican power, and the GOP's dominance looked impregnable. Now, battered by the recent election results and dismayed by the slow, steady decline in party registration, Republicans here are struggling to craft a new strategy. The percentage of registered Republicans has eroded - it now stands at 41% - and the party has long since lost control of the political districts that envelop the county seat of Santa Ana, a Latino-dominated city of 330,000, and surrounding communities in the county's core.

In a postmortem of his campaign, Mitt Romney blamed his loss on President Obama's "gifts" to key voting groups, thereby demonstrating, one last time, how he does not understand the country he hoped to lead. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan's poor showing in his own hometown indicates how out of touch he is with the community he claimed to know so well.  Maybe that lack of perception is one reason why these two aspirants for the highest offices in the land fell short of their goal. As many pundits have noted, Romney's characterization of government programs as gifts was an echo of his earlier disparaging remarks about the 47% of Americans who pay no income taxes.

Carlos Gutierrez, who led Mitt Romney's outreach to Latinos during the presidential campaign, had harsh words for the former nominee Sunday as he joined the growing number of conservative voices calling for immigration reform. Appearing on CNN's “State of the Union,” Gutierrez said he was “shocked” to hear about Romney's recent call to campaign donors in which he credited President Obama's “gifts” to various groups , including the Latino community, for his loss in the election.

Republicans just lost eight seats in the House. But if you'd wandered into the House of Representatives last week without reading the election returns, you might have concluded that the GOP won big on Nov. 6. "We have the second-largest Republican House majority since World War II," California Rep. Tom McClintock told reporters last week. "The American people agree with the positions of the Republican Party and heartily disagree with the positions of the Democratic Party. " And if that's how you see things, why compromise?

Mitt Romney, who just two weeks ago was the Republican Party's standard-bearer, seen by many as the all-but-elected president of the United States, has turned into a punching bag for fellow Republicans looking to distance themselves from his controversial “gifts” remark. “What the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote,” Romney said during a call with campaign donors Wednesday . Whether it's an instance of politicians smelling blood in the water as the party, following Romney's defeat, finds itself without a figurehead, or genuine outrage, a number of Republicans have eagerly castigated their former nominee.

Re “ Republicans in disarray over how to fix damage ,” Nov. 12 I've been inspired by Mark Z. Barabak's article on the disarray of the GOP. Republicans believe that government is the problem and that just about every sphere would be better managed by the private sector. It would be most persuasive to see America's rich and powerful movers and shakers demonstrate exactly how this could be done. Let's see the private sector give billions of dollars to the Red Cross in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

A bracing presidential election victory, gains in both houses of Congress and a handful of demographic and organizational realities made the argument plausible. America was becoming a “One Party Country,” a couple of political reporters argued in a well-received book. The history/polemic of George W. Bush's presidential triumphs and the hegemony of the Republican Party - written in 2006 by my former colleagues Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten - looks a bit ironic now, as a host of commentators argue the opposite.

Republicans set aside many differences - over immigration, gay rights and climate change among other things - in their fervor to win the White House. But after losing a second straight presidential campaign and squandering a prime opportunity to win control of the Senate, those combustible issues are now fueling a fight over the direction of the GOP and what Republicans, as a national party, should represent. Mitt Romney had barely conceded defeat and walked off the stage in Boston when the rupture emerged, between those calling for drastic change and others who said the problem was not the Republican Party but its nominee.