The “different Republican party” Lindberg envisions would also, in all likelihood, be a smaller one. I’m all for tax cuts and a strong defense posture, but they aren’t going to win the party a national majority by themselves. The Republicans’ inability to devise a decent strategy to rein in the courts is a political problem because it reduces the incentive for one of its largest constituencies to participate in normal politics–as opposed to withdrawing from politics altogether or turning to an extra-constitutional politics of rage and fantasy. If social conservatives can fight state by state, win some and lose some, they have a reason to vote Republican. Not if it’s “settled” that they lose everything (or, I suppose, more theoretically, that they win everything).