Quite a bit of discussion has been going about the fate of the Republican party, and whether it has been consigned to regional party status. Jim Geraghty has a pretty good summary of "yea" votes, and makes a good case for "nay."

Maybe I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but I remember back in the ancient bygone year of aught-four, when people were bemoaning the Democrats' transformation into a  party that could only compete on the West coast and in New England, effectively ceding the rest of the country to the Republicans.  This was, as I recall, the whole impetus behind Howard Dean's "50-state strategy," and why many Democrats were looking toward a Mark Warner or Evan Bayh candidacy before the roof caved in on Republicans.

When things go really badly for a party -- and it happens to all parties -- that party tends to be reduced to its base.   Democrats' share of the 2-party vote actually improved in New England in 1994, while they were getting slaughtered elsewhere (along these lines, I can also recall a magazine cover from 1995 or so, with the cover "Is The Party Over?" with cartoon donkeys on the front.  Sound familiar?).  After 1946, Democrats were largely reduced back to their base in the South and in Northern cities.  After 1964 and 1974, Republicans were left with some of their "main street" small town districts, and not much else.  In other words, what is going isn't without precedent, and the other party almost always bounces back (in fact, always has bounced back, at least since the 1850s).

Let's also not forget that the South is not such a terrible base for the GOP to have.  There are 131 Southern districts, not including pseudo-Southern states like Kentucky, Oklahoma and Missouri.  This is 30% of the seats in the country, and only 70-odd seats shy of a majority.  It is six times as many seats as are located in New England, half again as many times the number of seats in New England plus NY, PA, NJ and DE, and close to the 149 seats in those areas plus California, Oregon, and Washington.  Quite frankly, the tradeoff for most of the South was worth sacrificing New England, from a partisan perspective.

There are ominous signs for the Republicans, of course.  The party presently shows little interest in nominating candidates who can compete in moderate regions of the country, while the Democrats have no such problem.  The youth vote is trending away, and the electorate -- even in the South -- isn't getting whiter.  But to assume that the party won't adapt at some point in the next decade -- or that young voters and Hispanics will continue inevitably to vote Democratic at their current rate -- is a pretty big assumption to make, and may look as foolish in hindsight as the assumption that if the Democrats kept nominating liberals, they couldn't win outside of the Northeast and Pacific coast.