TELL ME AGAIN ABOUT HOW THE GOP IS DYING

Remember that Reince Priebus Republican "autopsy"? Remember being told that the Republican Party desperately needs to change or it'll die?

I said it was nonsense at the time and today we were reminded yet again of how nonsensical it is. Republicans in the Senate were able to keep the Manchin-Toomey background check proposal below the 60-vote threshold needed for passage; even if a handful of Democrats who voted with the GOP had voted yes, the bill still would have fallen short. And, of course, it doesn't matter, because Manchin-Toomey would have been blocked in the House.

And no one in the Republican Party has the slightest fear that these were risky votes going into 2014 or 2016.

Why should they worry? We may outnumber the opponents of expanded background checks 9-1, but they vastly outnumber us in the category of "People who'd crawl naked through ground glass to cast a one-issue vote based on gun policy."

The GOP may be in disfavor -- I still say that's mostly because it's chic among hardcore wingnuts to say that the party isn't conservative enough -- but the right, broadly speaking, still hasn't lost the loyalty of white heartlanders. White heartlanders still regard us as a cabal made up of nonwhites and snooty coastal elitists, and regard conservatism as Norman Rockwell's worldview come to life.

Find a way to change that and you'll really beat these guys. Expect that things will change by themselves because people answer poll questions a certain way and the status quo will never change.