Over at The American, Michael Barone has a very good article about the real problems faced by the GOP in the next presidential election. First, he disagrees that the recent confessions of adultery by two potential presidential candidates are the source of the GOP’s difficulties:
The Democratic party is surviving the confessions of adultery by 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, and the Republican party will survive the confessions of Ensign, who never seemed likely to be a serious presidential candidate, and Sanford, who seemed to have the potential to be an attractive candidate but whose quirkiness and eccentricity made him seem unlikely ever to be a successful one.
He then has an interesting analysis of what went wrong for each one of the Republicans campaigning for the 2008 nomination and draws implications for the 2012 campaign.
The whole thing here.