The $64,000 political question is what, if anything, will energize the Republican Party?

An undercurrent attitude is taking hold that it's inevitable that the White House in 2008 will follow the Congress and fall into the hands of the Democratic Party.

Republicans, already in a funk, get deeper into it as they contemplate this prospect, and are radiating a sense of impotence about what to do. The existing field of presidential candidates is not inspiring confidence and the question seems to be who will be the sacrificial lamb rather than who will be the contender.

Dollars are flowing in record proportions to Democrats. Democratic presidential candidates raised 50 percent more funds than Republicans in the first quarter.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Democrats are getting the majority of contributions from corporate Political Action Committees for the first time since 1994. According to the Journal, Democrats, who pulled in around a third of corporate PAC funds in the previous election cycle, got 56.5 percent of these funds in the first quarter of this year.

Inside the Washington political establishment, high-powered lobbying firms are retooling and bringing in new Democratic partners to get ready for the new era.

Fred Thompson's recent lethargic performance at the Lincoln Club in Orange County, Calif., didn't help. Thompson sounded more like a concerned elder statesman contemplating the country's problems over cigars and brandy than someone who is losing sleep about the direction of the country.

So what's the diagnosis? Can anything be done or must Republicans resign to an inevitable ebb and flow of history and accept that, for the time being, their time is up?

It's here where the supreme, and most grating, irony lies.

Republican success since the rise of Reagan has been defining a bankrupt Democratic Party, out of step with American values of freedom and limited government, and offering an alternative.

To recall Reagan's oft-quoted observation at the CPAC conference in 1985, "The tide of history is moving irresistibly in our direction. Why? Because the other side is virtually bankrupt of ideas. It has nothing more to say, nothing to add to the debate. It has spent its intellectual capital."

The difference between the Democratic Party in 2007 and 1985 is absolutely zero.

Democrats have not generated a single new idea. They're all about government and taxes today as they were in 1985. Continued...