What I am glad to see shrink is not the party of rational, analytical conservative thought, but the party of Rovian dirty tricks, media-braying contests, and the win-at-all-costs rejection of dialogue which has typified so much of the RP's history over the last many decades.

They used dirty tricks, many of which we never found out about, but what was really tiresome is their endless use of cheap rhetorical devices, pushbuttons, yelling codewords. illogic compensated for by sheer amplitude, and pugnacious disdain for human thought.

I am glad to see the party of Ann Coulter and Dick Cheney shrink. If the party of Walter Lippman and William Buckley wishes to have a rebirth to take its place, I am all for it. I am just sick of being battered with distortion as a mode of public communication, and handed fugues of hatred and fear as substitutes for reason.