The baying at the moon began the instant it became evident that none of the swing states were going Mitt Romney’s way on Tuesday evening.  Like gargoyles atop a cathedral, the faces of Republican strategists and their sidekicks on right-wing television looked stunned with surprise then were etched by gall.  After denial could no longer hold back the reality of the night, horror began to grip their faces.  Barack Obama would be President until 2017, and the billions of dollars that the Supreme Court had sanctioned for corporations to buy the election started going down the drain as each race for the Senate was called.  Their only consolation was losing a handful of seats in House of Representatives – and that only because state legislatures throughout the country have so gerrymandered congressional districts that Democrats cannot mount competitive races in most states.

And so before the night was out, the discussion turned to how Republicans “reach out” to HispanicLatinos, who generated supermajorities of as much as 80 percent in some states for the Democratic ticket. 

The problem the Republicans have is real.  It is worse than real.  Going forward, Republicans can tinker at the national level with pretty faces like Marco Rubio and come up with some sort of compromise on immigration reform.  But the real challenge for the national Republican party are the state parties, state legislatures, boards of education and local governments across the nation that were taken over by the Tea party in 2010.  And that is a much deeper problem, for it cannot be uprooted quickly enough for the next several election cycles.

Going forward, the locals will wag the dog.  Does anyone think that House Majority Leader John Boehner or a HispanicLatino Republican senator from Florida like Rubio will matter as much in Arizona as Joe Arpaio?  In Florida itself, does anyone really think that the state legislature in Tallahassee will revisit voting restrictions meant to suppress the HispanicLatino vote?  In Texas, does anyone think that HispanicLatinos will not take note if the horrendous cuts to education that the state legislature enacted last year are not rectified next year?  One bad headline can erase a mountain of points of time on television.  Ask Todd Akin in Missouri or Richard Mourdock in Indiana.

The challenge for Republicans, though, is more than about how to keep the Tea party candidates from misspeaking — or speaking truthfully.  It is silly to hear Republican spokespersons try to get their arms around the problem by using terms like “rebranding” the party and “reaching out” to HispanicLatinos.  They cannot rebrand a bad product, and they cannot reach out to HispanicLatinos unless they understand that their experience gives them a different view of the world.  The HispanicLatino view of the world is that they have a lot to make up socially, economically and politically and that Republicans stand in their way.

Republicans at the local level stand in their way by not investing in schools and teachers.  Republicans stand in their way at the precinct voting booth around the corner.  Republicans stand in their way by not understanding that they cannot keep restrictive admission policies at colleges and universities in place if they hope to grow the economy.  Republicans stand in their way by going to an ideologically rigid Supreme Court with supercilious lawsuits over affirmative action.  Republicans stand in their way by opposing a health-care law that is elemental to the formation of an effective work force.  Republicans stand in their way by fomenting hate against immigrants through locally restrictive housing laws and against other groups like gays and lesbians that ricochets into the HispanicLatino community.  Republicans stand in their way when they squelch the rights of women, including HispanicLatinas.

A Republican apparatchik on television said this morning that the way forward for his party will be “painful”.  Indeed it will.  Republicans are going to have to grow out of their current selves because HispanicLatinos have grown a new world around them.  Growth and change are always difficult – especially for a party that represents an aging population.  Republicans at the national level do not have anyone to get them to move and catch up with the future now arrived.  Perhaps former Florida governor Jeb Bush could, but his name is tainted and will remain so.  Almost 55 percent of voters in exit polls said on Tuesday they still blame his brother for the lousy economy.  Who will yank from the throat of the Republican party the chokehold that the antiquated religious right, an out-of-touch Tea party and the redoubtable Grover Norquist have on the no-longer-recognizable party of Abraham Lincoln?

In the end, a larger, more horrible truth might be at work for Republicans: That some political philosophies and political parties do die, their howls to the heavens notwithstanding.  Waiting for the dawn, the world revolved underneath them, moving them beyond the horizon from which their screams could no longer be heard.

Jesse Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.