The Tea-Party-dominated GOP made history this month, blowing an election in which a Republican victory seemed all but predestined and foreordained.

The Democratic victory flew in the face of Virginia's long tradition of electing statewide officers from the party opposed to the sitting President.

Worse, the GOP lost despite facing a candidate closely associated with a Democratic President suffering his lowest approval ratings ever.

Why?

By deciding to chose its candidates in convention rather than a primary, the Virginia GOP essentially allowed its activist right, its Tea Party wing, to choose its candidates.

Cuccinelli and Jackson were, of course, disasters.

Even so, they came close to snatching a victory from what at one point seemed an inevitable and overwhelming defeat.

GOP veterans of the Rockefeller or even the Ronald Reagan stripe have been heard admitting that ANY old-school moderate or conservative Republican could have captured the top two state-wide slots this year, noting that even Mark Obenshain came within a recount of defeating a much better man.

The GOP's nightmare right believes, and continues to preach, that it is the wave of the future . . . that its losses are analogs of the early defeats of the Young Americans for Freedom in the days of Goldwater vs. Johnson.

They're not.

Indeed, arguably they're much more similar to the Dixiecrats, or McGovernites, or the early supporters of George Wallace.

Far from representing the vanguard of the future they are the last sad vestiges of old and long discredited prejudices, dying religious dogma and destructive points of view.

Happily, their astoundingly self-righteous special insights into the mind of god wind up alienating more people than they convince, and arguably they convince few, if anyone new.

They oppose women's rights, the rights of gay people, voting rights, the rights of immigrants, universal health care, modern science, and most of the other insights that have made the world a safer and saner place to live.

Older white men and older white married women seem to remain disproportionately gullible . . . but not young people, women, minorities of all description (including those in the process of becoming majorities).

Most Americans, and most Virginians now find others find their views short sighted at best and heartlessly mean-spirited at worst.

They seek office in local, state and national institutions they make no bones about despising.

They preach minimalist government but make no bones about using government to enforce their misguided and all too often self-destructive opinions about sex, drugs and rock and roll on us all.

They're on the wrong side of history.

Most of their children are already disenchanted with them.

Their grandchildren will see them as misguided at best, and at worst as the moral equivalents of Strom and Jesse, tail-gunner Joe, and George Wallace: the prejudiced, spouting the dubious, in defense of the irrational and mean-spirited.

The GOP allows itself to be ruled by its right wing at its peril.

The party and the country will suffer for as long as they continue to do so.