In our system, the people are sovereign. That does not mean they’re infallible. The GOP needs better candidates who’ll make better arguments, finding the right way to say the right things. Yet there’s only so much a principled political party can do. If there’s a national consensus favoring a policy choice that conservatives consider disastrous, turning ourselves into the party that promises to move us more slowly toward the cliff than the other party would isn’t the answer. A big part of politics is about figuring out how to win elections . . . but that’s not everything. You also have to have clear ideas and convictions about which principles are of such importance that it would be better to lose an election than to jettison them. Working through that dilemma is what any party has to do after a bad election day.