The video carping about government moochers may well have sealed it. Mitt Romney is going down and the fight already is on for the future of the Republican Party. The battle will be bitter—and prolonged, says Robert Shrum.

In an America where the party of angry white men increasingly speaks for and to a permanent minority, it could take another defeat and maybe another before the GOP comes to its senses. Surely Romney himself would have been better off in the general election if he had defended his Massachusetts health-care reform and sounded occasional notes of pragmatism and compassion. But then, of course, he never would have been the nominee. He could even have let us assume he wore pajamas to bed. Now hovering over his apparently desperate march toward a concession speech is the specter of Republicans fighting their protracted civil war. Someday, somehow, someone will do for the conservative side of our politics what Bill Clinton did as the progressive who brought Democrats back to the mainstream. But post-2012, maybe even Ryan won’t be pure enough; it could be full-Santorum ahead.