While I'm sure that this article will seem amusing if we had a GOP landslide in 2012 or 2016, I think the value of it is to point out rather disturbing trends about the electorate for Republican candidates.
If we are narrowing our base and narrowing our ability to outreach, our voter base and numbers of votes decrease.... imagine that!
A GOP landslide in 2012 or even 2016 depends upon catastrophic failure of Obama as President (heck, Dubya was able to get re-elected in 2004 despite sub-par performance as President)
and the rise of some charismatic Republican nominee for President who can offer an even stronger hope for America than Obama did in 2008. Ronald Reagan was such a candidate in 1980, and note well that he came close to defeating Gerald Ford in his primary bid in 1976. Reagan peaked as a campaigner just as the Democrats fouled up.
Obama seems to have at the least the political skills of Ronald Reagan, so he is likely to be effective. Like Reagan, he may offend the partisan opponents so much that they think him vulnerable... but he knows how to cut deals with people not so partisan, people intent on getting a little something out of the government or out of a deal.
The partisan Left thought Reagan awful in 1984 but found Reagan's landslide victory of 1984 a complete surprise. I can imagine much the same happening this time. Obama is definitely not George H.W. Bush (shrewd administrator and diplomat, but a mediocre politician), Jimmy Carter (who barely won in 1976, and had little leeway for anything going wrong), and of course Herbert Hoover, which demonstrates how rare it is for a the populace to turn on a President whom they thought the portent of a new era of prosperity. Anyone who wants Obama to be the new Herbert Hoover wants a Pyrrhic victory.
Conservative Republicans have changed little in ideology from Ronald Reagan, but do any of them have Reagan's political skills? Do any of them have Reagan's charisma? Can any of them ease the concerns of not-so-partisan Americans who want little more than economic security and will sacrifice anything to get it? Can any of them win outside of their areas of obvious strength? Reagan's ideology won't be enough. George H.W. Bush stuck closely to it, and had only a one-term Presidency.
Using Reagan as an analogue for Obama, I can predict that Obama will be re-elected in a landslide, and his successor will win election in his own right in 2016. In 2020 the Obama-era agenda will have lost steam, and some Republican candidate that we barely know now or hardly think Presidential because he has too many rough edges will have a good chance of winning States that complacent Democrats think 'theirs' until too late.
