Have you noticed that Barack Obama is actually running unopposed for the Presidency?

Not since 1996 has it been this dispiriting, this embarrassing to be on the right. A dozen years ago, we all knew Bob Dole didn’t stand the proverbial snowball’s chance of becoming President, since the conservative base loathed the former Kansas Senator and independent voters regarded the veteran as too old for the job. Now, twelve years later, we’re in the exact same spot with John McCain.

I hate to say this, but I have abandoned all hope for a McCain victory in November. The candidate is too tepid, his campaign too weak, his opponent too skilled. Obama can tell fifteen thousand “white lies” between now and November, and image-obsessed America will still elect him.

What happened to the Republican Party--and the conservative movement, for that matter? Who cut these giants down to the level of normal height? The notion of a left-wing candidate like Obama winning the White House would have been unthinkable twenty-five years ago. Now, his win is a guarantee.

Confusion is now the signifying trait of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. McCain and the GOP base are about as cordial with each other as Iran and Iraq in the 1980s. Rush Limbaugh is wasting valuable broadcast time attacking alleged pseudo-conservatives like Grand New Party author Ross Douthat and the editors of the Weekly Standard instead of fighting the real enemy (Obama and his minions).

Obama is chuckling all the way to the White House. He knows that McCain is token competition, and that this election is merely an exhibition contest. Had the GOP base unified behind a Romney or a Thompson or a Hunter, Obama would be in for a real fight. However, against an opponent disliked by seventy-five percent of his party, Obama can take it easy.

The scary thing is, the right might not be able to get it together even after Obama wins. The various factions of the Republican Party will still be at odds with each other. The Northeastern country-clubbers will still loathe the Southern evangelicals. The paleocons will still hate the neocons. There’s no Reagan figure on the horizon that can unify these disparate elements. President Bush was barely able to do so; in fact, the tensions between the various GOP camps have arguably worsened over the past eight years.

Only now are we beginning to see just how important Reagan was to the Republican Party. The GOP was hanging by a thread in the mid-1970s before Reagan came along and made that slim thread a strong bond. He skillfully unified the party, turning Republicans who were skeptical of him into strong supporters. Once he left office, it seemed as though that precious unity left with him.

Yes, the Democrat Party has its fault lines, but that party has always been united in its loathing of conservatives and Republicans; this is why Obama will ultimately receive tremendous support from those who are now disappointed that he defeated Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination. However, in Republican-land, everybody wants to rule the world: the moderates and the conservatives both want to get rid of each other, thus causing the problems that will ensure McCain’s defeat.

From a certain perspective, the GOP’s woes will reduce the historical impact of Obama’s win. Like Bill Clinton in 1992, Obama could have never defeated an undivided Republican Party. Had Republicans set aside their differences with Bush in 1992, George H. W. Bush would have secured a second term, and perhaps would have started an antiterrorism initiative in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center attack that could have forestalled its 2001 sequel. However, the GOP base’s issues with Bush were so strong and so deep that some conservatives stayed home while others “cheated” on Bush with Ross Perot. Today, McCain is even more despised by committed conservatives than Bush was sixteen years prior—which means that despite Obama’s Clintonesque radicalism, many conservatives will boycott the ballot on November 4.

It’s a repellent state of affairs—but like death itself, it cannot be avoided, only dealt with. January 20, 2009 will be a note-for-note reproduction of January 20, 1993. This decade will end the way it began, with the United States run by a Democrat President unable and/or unwilling to confront the challenges of a troubled world. With the American conservative movement grounded and pounded, that world could end up spinning off its axis.