It seems inconceivable.  Republican leaders in Washington and elsewhere do not get how dangerous the fire they are playing with is.  On almost every front – ranging from the disaster of the fiscal cliff to the submarining of President Obama’s governmental nominations to the prosecution of Benghazi to control of dangerous weaponry that kill kids to contraception to defending millionaires’ tax bills – Republicans are the ancien régime before its collapse in France.

It is one thing to not understand that the country no longer agrees with their positions on everything from taxes to gay rights to woman’s choice to climate change.  It is quite another thing to not realize that the country is ready to move on.  For Republicans, the latter is the more dangerous.  Since the country knows what it believes and thinks, when it decides to move on, it will and start leaving the past behind – and it has.

The end of the year comes fraught with symbolism.  Knowing that the ground has shifted under them socially and demographically like that which had shifted under the rulers of aristocratic France before the revolution, the Republican party is reacting in a way that only accelerates their doom.  To me, the optimism of a few days ago that Congress would begin to address how to control assault weapons of mass destruction and how to manage and administer immigration and how to address other critical issues is way too high.

The new year will make things worse for Republicans and, unfortunately, for the country.  Instead of a fast spring in which real progress could be made – Democrats with an advantage but Republicans with a golden opportunity to moderate their image and brand – we face deadlock…and a real possibility of the economy being thrown back into recession!  Imagine that: A conscious decision to implode the economy.

In retrospect, the Obama campaign’s selection of Forward as its campaign theme captured the country’s sense of place and self.  When chosen, the word was lambasted by Republican candidates for President since so little progress, according to them, had been made against the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  But those of us who have been banging the drums for years about what the social and demographic changes mean for the country understood it.  The country has changed.  It truly has.  The only ones who have not changed are about 20-25 percent of the country that is the essence of the Tea party that runs the Republican party.

So: Meaningful action on control of weapons?  Doubt it.  Meaningful immigration reform?  Doubt it.  Meaningful reform and improvement of schools?  Doubt it.  Meaningful rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure?  Doubt it.  Meaningful new ideas on climate change?  Doubt it.  A meaningful approach on how to convert natural gas into the nation’s new economic engine?  Doubt it.

When the bottom line is drawn by the end of next year, it could be that the country might be in revolt especially if the economic recovery is strangled by a misguided few who in their own way are as socially misanthropic as Adam Lanza was before he walked into a school hall in Connecticut and slaughtered 20 innocents.

What a corner the Republicans have painted themselves into and what a precipice the country now faces as a result.  In the first reaction to the disasters now taking shape in Washington, the global financial markets reacted badly.  It was at long last the economy that drove the despots in Paris to ruin.

When Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary in 1992 and had with him a band of right-wing crazies brandishing pitchforks, he was on to something.  Except that the band has grown into national revulsion – but on the other side.

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