Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker continues to surprise me, and in a good way - meaning right-wingers will grow to hate her more than they already do, particularly after they read this:

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it. …

<snip>

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Here’s the deal, ‘pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

It isn’t that culture doesn’t matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party — and conservatism with it — eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one’s heart where it belongs.

Yeah, that’s gonna go over well with the base.

You know, it’s fun to watch all this infighting, and it’s interesting to read the likes of Parker, who - if she were to get her way, or rather if the Republican Party were to reconstitute itself along the lines that she might suggest - might actually lead to a GOP that I could support.

But later on in the piece, she makes the very point I hit on in the forthcoming week’s print edition:

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can’t have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting.

With the exception of Miss Alaska, of course.

In other words, if the GOP wants to return to electoral prominence in the future, it cannot remain so old, so white - so hostile to the idea of diversity in all its forms, from ethnic diversity to religious diversity.

But it will, won’t it?