The Recriminations Begin

McCain hasn't even lost, and the postmortems have begun.

David Brooks is a conservative columnist for The New York Times and he is also a frequent guest commentator on PBS's The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. Earlier this month, in an interview with The Atlantic, Brooks was quoted as saying that Sarah Plain "represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party." In his column on Sunday, The New York Times, Ceding the Center, Brooks writes that John McCain would be an outstanding president, but he never escaped the straightjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times.

Another writer believes that McCain made a fatal error in turning his campaign over to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and that if the Republi-cons persist in the us-and-them, real vs. fake America tactics that dates to Newt Gingrich, "they are doomed to be the party of yesterday."

If the Republi-cons lose, will it be because they ceded the center?

And are they the party of yesterday?