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Hardly. I'm not trying to join the "We're doomed" club, but I also don't think it's wise to pretend that yesterday's results don't speak even a little to the current state of the Republican Party (which was all that this post was trying to say, I think). To refuse to do so seems a bit like the Democrats thinking their prior losses have been due to a failure to get their message out.

I think there has been a "tipping point", but not in the way that the media thinks there has. I think it is that the conservative base is getting a bit tired of being treated as the African-Americans of the Republican party, courted at election time but ignored for the other 3 and a half years of the cycle.

What I think you're liable to see in the future is conservatives beginning to sit out those races where all that's offered is a moderate or RINO and where the only reason to vote FOR someone is that at least he or she isn't a Democrat. (And no, that isn't a wasted vote - politics, like many things in life responds to supply and demand - if the Republican party comes to the realization that RINOs can no longer get elected dogcatcher, then they'll be forced to actually run principled conservatives). I think you're going to see conservative money start going less and less to the Party structure and more to the individual candidate, simply because the Party doesn't care about principle but only electing someone with the right letter after their name (the Chafee primary in Rhode Island is a primary example of that at the moment).

The New Jersey race is a good example. The Republican Party ran a Democrat in Republican clothing. During the campaign, when he wasn't engaging in negative personal attacks against Corzine (I'm all for "negative" campaigns that examine the candidate's record, but come on....commercials featuring the ex-wife of your opponent is just a tad sleazy and desparate), Forrester was trumpeting the fact that he holds no Republican positions. There was a thread earlier this morning trying to make the claim that Forrester got a higher percentage of the vote than previous Republicans in New Jersey. The reason everyone was supposed to be happy with Forrester was that only a RINO had a realistic chance to beat Corzine. Well, Forrester got 43% of the vote to Corzine's 54%. Bret Schundler, an actual conservative, got 41% to Jim McGreevey's 56% and Schundler in that campaign was being savaged by the RINOs in the press as well as by the Democrats. (Even President Bush lost only by 240,000 votes to Kerry in 2004 in NJ, by a 53-46% margin.)

In Virginia, while Kilgore was a conservative, he apparently ran a really stupid campaign, complete with Hitler commercials and by ticking off the NRA. So, at least in that case, it was more a matter of shooting himself in the foot. This is similar to our last campaign for governor in Pennsylvania when the Republicans ran a candidate against Ed Rendell that made Al Gore look positively animated!