It was a dark and stormy night.

            I was walking in the fog down a poorly lit street, when a furtive-looking man wearing a trench coat stepped out from a side alley and blocked my path. He opened up the flap of the trench coat and I saw he had several watches pinned to the inner lining.

            “Hey, buddy,” he says, “wanna buy a watch?”

            I’m suspicious, but what the heck, my old watch was about at the end of its life cycle, and I was in the market for a new one.

            “So, tell me about the watches.”

            The guy’s eyes lit up at the prospect of a sale.

            “First of all,” says he, “look at the brand. It’s a well-known brand, and for years it was the watch of choice for many Americans. It was conservative, not flashy. It was reliable. It kept good time.”

            “Come to think of it,” says I, “I do remember the brand. But I haven’t seen it around much recently. Where’s it been?”

            “Well, that’s a sad story. Management committed a strategic blunder. They decided to concentrate on selling our watches to a small fringe of rabid watch collectors. Then they found out there weren’t enough folks in the fringe to enable us to meet our national sales goals, so now we’re trying to reintroduce our brand to the general public in the hope that the mass market will restore our brand to its former glory.”

            “Fair enough. So how do these watches differ from the ones that led your brand to disaster?”

            The guy looks up and down the street to make sure no one can overhear him.

            “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, buddy, but they’re the same watches. The brand repackaged them, but what’s inside, what makes them tick, is exactly the same.”

            “But if you couldn’t sell enough of them before, what makes you think you can sell more of them now if they are the same watches?”

            The guy seemed offended.

            “You have to trust the brand,” he sniffed, “and hope that things turn out better this time around after they solve the production problems.”

            “What production problems?”

            He seems uneasy.

            “Well, truth be told, in order to appeal to the rabid watch collectors, the brand needed to make some quality compromises … ”

            “Such as?”

            “Okay, so they’re erratic. They can’t be relied upon. Given the opportunity, they do nothing at all, and hope you’re satisfied that they give you the correct time twice a day. Do you want to buy a watch or not?”

            “I think I’ll pass,” says I, and continued walking down the street.

            That bit of fiction aside, today’s national Republican Party is offering the American people essentially the same deal—not that it’s much of a deal.

For years, Republican candidates for Congress and the White House have catered more and more to a party “base” that, more and more, has been increasingly out of step with a majority of the American people. It’s not a case of the majority drifting left so much as the “base” stampeding even further to the right.

            Now the gap is so noticeable that there is a recognition the “base” is not a large enough voting block to win a national election.

            So, has the Republican brand improved, er, “moderated” itself in order to attract broader electoral support?

            On the contrary, it has doubled down on its right wing agenda in order to solidify its “base” while doing little, if anything, to accommodate those holding more centrist positions. Folks are asked to trust the Republican brand “as is” and hope for the best.

            After its 2012 defeat, the party conducted a post-mortem. The report that came out of that exercise made several reasonable recommendations. Anxious to avoid alienating the base, none of those recommendations were acted upon to any significant degree.

            After a train wreck of a nomination process, we are presented with two leading candidates who are proof positive that it is not always the cream that rises to the top.  We are asked to support one or the other of them for no other good reason than that they are Republican, and they are conservative—or in the case of one, maybe or maybe not.

            It isn’t good enough. To enable the party to limp through this election only allows it to continue its self-destructive trajectory. As is often the case with an addict, the party is unlikely to change course until it hits rock bottom—and that means losing the national election this fall.

            By this time, my political preferences are fairly well known, but at the most basic level I know America needs two viable political parties that offer options that can be pursued without first taking leave of reality. The Republican Party needs to reboot. If it is unable to do so voluntarily, perhaps it will out of necessity.

            Or resign itself to having fewer and fewer folks buying its watches.