Newt as a Republican Symptom

Tom Edsall, in his opinion piece Newt Gingrich and the Future of the Right in the New York Times, echos my Newt take:

But the country is going through a profound restructuring in moral and economic thinking and the danger for Republicans is that their current coalition might become obsolete. If the party doesn’t adapt, the alternative is that its power centers — the Christian right, anti-immigration forces, and proponents of policies that benefit the affluent at the expense of the less well-off — will refuse to adjust, in which case the party risks going the way of the Studebaker.

It's not just the growth in hispanic voters that threatens the viability of the Republican coalition, the entire country is shifting away from them.