Nah, sooner or later the Republicans are going to veer back to the middle, unless they want to suffer the fate of the Whigs. It's just a question of how many elections they're going to lose before they figure it out. Hypothetically, a Republican candidate in 2012 could run on civil rights, ending military interventionism (just like W did, lol), and prosecuting too-big-to jail executives; all while still remaining true to the purported Republican party ethos. And while I suspect the chance of any such Republican candidate is very, very low, I do think it would be a pretty popular platform.