The Republican party f***ed up 8 years so badly that they made the country shift to the left. And with demographics moving against them in the form of an influx of immigrants who, along with being sort of being sort liberal to begin with, are annoyed at the hardliner's view of them, and in the face of an big economic crisis accompanied by an FDR like unifying democratic president...the Republican party seems poised to suffer at the very least temporary marginalization.
It's hard to make predictions--especially about the future. The republican party survived the Great Depression, maybe it will survive what its facing now and prosper again in the future. Maybe it will die. Maybe it will evolve. Maybe the Democrat's gains will turn out to be relatively etherial, even though the Republican brand has been toxic for two straight cycles. I really have no idea.
My hopes are that the country will move in the direction Canadian and European stlye government, that inequality will shrink as a result of the institution of an progressive tax code (
Our Regressive Income Tax | Middle Class Impact), that health care will be, if not cheap, less a commodity and more of a right, that our education system will be on par with those of Europe, that we will start living for tommorow as well as today, and that all of this will be for the better.