In all likelihood, yes -I think a lot of you are placing more faith in the self-corrective capacities of the GOP than they deserve. They aren't going to nominate someone with cross-party or cross-ideological appeal in 2020 -they are going to double down with the Tea Party and pick either Ted Cruz or Tim Scott, either of whom will go down in flames. Plus, Hillary as an incumbent would be an even more formidable candidate than she is now, with a governing record behind her.
Whether the GOP electorate "learns the right lessons" from Trump's loss might not necessarily be determinative. The voters could end up learning absolutely nothing, yet still nominate an electable candidate in the end, because a different group of candidates is running, and the votes split a different way.
There's no guarantee that a candidate as bad as Trump (in terms of being popular with enough primary voters but unpopular with GE voters) will run in 2020, or that if one doesn't, that someone like Cruz will be nominated in his place. Rerun the 2016 race without Trump, and it's completely possible that a Marco Rubio ends up as the nominee rather than Cruz. Cruz seemed to be stuck getting the bulk of his support from the rightward edge of the primary electorate, and not clear that he could have expanded beyond that.
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