The GOP self-destructing into a party that couldn't obstruct would be best for everyone and even Republicans should recognize that. It's not productive to have a major political party who shuts down the government over political reasons.
I think that it goes beyond this though.
Since Nixon's Southern Strategy in 1968, the GOP has used racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, and a host of other issues which prey on people's social fears to win election. However, few Republican members of Congress were true believers. The GOP after Taft was the party of choice of the nation's wealthy elite and after the New Deal had subjected them to higher taxes and greater labor regulations, they began to fear that the US would slip into socialism, so they fought back, first with the bailout of NYC in the early 70s and onwards, creating a very discordant ideological blend of pure liberal capitalism and social conservatism and inventing a fantasy of America as a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" country. This fantasy appealed to people so they voted for Reagan, giving him massive landslide wins.
However, this image of American exceptionalism was offensive to many, especially African Americans, gays and lesbians, feminists, etc. The Reagan-Ayn Rand ideological paradigm demonized these people, playing off of old fears, but using new rhetoric to turn the majority of the country against them. My grandparents voted for Reagan thinking he would make America "great" again, conveniently forgetting that it wasn't this "independent spirit" that made us great, but our ability to work together and overcome the ugly inheritances of our colonial past. The 90s were when the culture wars began to heat up. Bill Clinton tried to take a middle path to circumvent them, but ended up bowing to the "silent majority" to cut welfare and deny gays civil rights. Wealth inequality increased manifold as important services in the safety net were squashed and all the progress made from 1932-1968 in healing our nation's post Gilded Age divisions were squashed. George W. Bush used homophobia and xenophobia to eke out small wins, but the burgeoning urban class--composed mostly of those very people alienated by the rhetoric of the Reagan years, gave Democrats a high floor.
In 2008, the floor rose above 50% and the Republicans panicked. The rank and file supporters of the Republican Party, the true believers in a version of American history that never even existed took to the streets, angry and fearful of the coming changes in America, and basically took over the party from the elite who had always ran the show. Now, they manage to scare up enough of their base to win the midterms handily, but this too won't last. Eventually their supporters will get old and pass away, change their minds about gays and blacks and immigrants, become disillusioned, or just realize that the Republican Party establishment sold them a lie for 40+ years because some billionaires in Manhattan wanted lower taxes.
The period of progressivism in America is just beginning. It may not be an abrupt change like Roosevelt's 1932 romp, but that's because the issue is more complicated. However, if we do not create a country where the income of your parents, the color of your skin, the gender of your lover (or yourself for that matter) does not control your outcome in life, we will slide into irrelevancy and violence and most of us know that. The GOP obstructionism has less to do with not passing bills and more to do with perpetuating harmful cultural ideas and a culture war that is literally trying to stand against the tides of time.
I'm not a socialist like I was in my youth, but I'm not a big fan of capitalism either. We don't have either in this country, however. WE have a system that benefits the elite, almost like neo-feudalism, and the inevitable demise of the GOP is the beginning of that system's end. I think in the near future we will see the Dems go extinct too, or change, and the debate will re-center on a Rand Paul-like ideology that emphasize personal responsibility and open marketplaces and a Leftist ideology that is inspired by, but not really socialism. This will be a good and healthy debate for America, but to get there we have to cut the hateful elements out of our politics. That starts with the end of the current GOP.
