One of my favorite things about Ramesh is the apparently endless supply of very cold water that he pours from time to time on the dopey dreams and loopy ambitions of overly zealous ideologues, those who get carried away with the sound of our own voices, and the wantonly apocalyptic. It should be obvious, even to those who are less than fully emotionally and politically invested in the well-being of the Republican party, that he is absolutely right about its prospects. The political options for conservatives are to reform it or to replicate it — and its problems — in some new and weaker form.

The “Burn It Down!” faction of 2016 does not seem to have given very much thought to what it would be left with afterward.

What is peculiar is how resistant Republicans are to learning from their successes. As Ramesh points out, they have majorities in both houses of Congress and they occupy a majority of the governorships; they also have a commanding position in state legislatures. But a great many Republicans, and a larger share of conservative voices on talk radio and cable news, are fixated on the presidency, which often blinds them not only to the successes of Republicans in lesser offices but also to the virtues of those Republicans and the reasons for their success.

There is a reason, I suspect, why Republicans can have so much success within a state such as Pennsylvania without enjoying comparable success in putting the state in the Republicans’ column in the Electoral College. Republicans do not have a commanding position in Florida in terms of party affiliation, but they keep winning basically every race at the state level, and do well with their congressional candidates, too. New Jersey has a Republican governor. So does progressive Wisconsin. So does Michigan. San Diego has a Republican mayor. So does Miami — he’s an immigrant named Tomás Pedro Regalado, and his success might be of some interest to Republicans come November 9.

I do not think Rick Scott would make a very good cable-news host. But he is a good governor, one who has done useful and productive things that have left his state and its people better off in ways that can be pointed to and understood. The same goes for Rick Perry, Scott Walker, and many more.

Surely there is some political value in that.