You have to wonder right now, if the Faustian deals the Republican party made to appeal to the old white Southern democratic block in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s have now come due and the party of Lincoln is now (as our daily kos graphic properly illustrates) is on the verge of extinction.
The Republican party, now a regional white religious party has been fatally run aground by electing the nation's first evangelical president.
Republicans gave their business benefactors enough rope to strangle the economy and gave their religious benefactors laugh in the face of science policies.
The problem is that America is becoming increasingly un-religious and the Republicans cannot truly be a party of limited government because 1) Americans like government intervention in their lives so long as it is helpful (in disaster relief, health care, social security, etc) 2) Republicans owe much of their survival to big money donors such as commercial interests with big government contracts and 3) their constituency looks to the government to regulate issues of morality (abortion and same sex marriage for instance).
Looking forward, I'm not sold on the Repubican Party's chances. So long as they don't come to their senses and try to articulate a secular governing philosophy they will maintain their religious base. Doing so would cause the fundamentalists to mobilize and form their own religious party- thus ending the hijacking of the traditional big-business Republican party. But sticking with the tired old logic that the founding fathers wanted freedoms of religion not freedom from religion, thus placating their main constituency, will only further alienate the GOP from reality. Climate change will continue to happen whether you believe it or not, evolution doesn't mind you calling it a hoax (look at viruses, as Bill Maher said recently, viruses "evolve" right before our eyes), gays will get their rights and put to bed another Republican boogeyman.
It's become clear, arguments that won the day in 1990 don't make sense now. Young people who grew up then never saw what the fuss was about. We didn't "fear" the gays and we didn't "distrust" the blacks. Look where we are now.
For the Republicans to survive they need to understand that this current generation of Americans isn't made up of millions of Joe the Plumbers. He would have been the child "left behind" not the one looking to get ahead.