Right-wing Republicanism meeting its just rewards?

Interesting analysis by Sidney Blumenthal in Salon ($) drawing a contrast between the historical significance of failure between the Bush and Nixon administrations.
Says Blumenthal:

The Republican Party, disoriented by defeat, its leadership unable to whip its troops into line without the incentives of entrenched power, and crushed by Bush's unpopularity, has turned into a scene from bedlam. Having just suffered loss of Congress, Republicans awake to the prospect of further fatalities in 2008. At least 30 Republican members of the House are contemplating retirement, according to the Washington Post. In the 2006 wipeout, 34 Republicans clung to their seats by winning less than 55 percent, making them prime targets in the next cycle.

On the Senate side, Republicans hold 21 of the 33 seats up, many of them vulnerable. One, Wayne Allard of Colorado, announced his retirement last week. Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon has called Bush's "surge" in Iraq "absurd," adding, "It may even be criminal." Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who is rumored to be thinking of retiring, called Bush's policy "Alice in Wonderland." Another Republican facing reelection, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, said, "I just don't believe this makes sense," adding that he would "stand against" Bush's Iraq policy. On Monday, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Armed Forces Committee, introduced a resolution opposing Bush's "surge" . . . . When Republicans in Congress see Bush they are staring into the abyss.

Bush's failure is tainting his party even more than Nixon tarred the Republicans. The Democratic victories in 1974 were in retrospect a momentary swing of the pendulum in reaction to Watergate, but not the basis of a lasting realignment. The Republican era, which surfaced first in 1966, was temporarily set back, but not reversed. Nixon, after all, had won 49 states in 1972. After Jimmy Carter's interregnum, Ronald Reagan resumed where Nixon had left off, with a conservative vengeance. . . .

There will always be “conservatism” – it’s just a matter of what its content is. At this time, trying to hold onto a successful program like Social Security and time-tested, once-bipartisan taxation structures that include an estate tax and reasonable progressivity, and trying to get back to a time of using war only as a last resort and emphasizing diplomacy in our relationships with other nations, the Democratic Party, and even the progressive movement and contemporary liberalism, have a better claim to being conservative in the classic Burkean sense than the right-wing Republicans. Right-wing Republicanism is radical and reactionary, far from being conservative. It is defined by hatred for everything that has happened in the 20th century in the way of what we usually think of as social progress. What we may be witnessing is the generational decline of right-wing conservatism, as the American people finally get to see what a disaster it is as a governing philosophy. For that, I suppose we can thank George Bush and Richard Cheney, but many people have paid a terrible price for the lesson.