Six months after the election...

Monday marked the six-month mark since Obama whupped McCain in the presidential election.

Okay, the Republicans have now had six months to pull themselves together. How’s it going?

Let’s take a quick snapshot -- look at how their leaders and their message are doing. From today’s news reports:

Eric Cantor reverses himself on whether the current GOP outreach is a “listening tour”, on orders from Rush, gives a completely incoherent explanation of our current health care crisis, and is humiliated by a McCain campaign staffer who pointed out that the notion of a McCain/Cantor ticket last year was a joke, taken seriously only by Cantor’s PR posse. Mike Pence got banged around like a piñata by Chris Matthews for his incoherent tapdancing on whether he believes in evolution or not. Steele, as we recall, got spanked by other RNC members, and was forced to back down on control of RNC finances. Specter is being made to beg to get his seniority back in the next Congress. Pawlenty is heading for a lose-lose decision in the Franken race and now has 50-percent disapprovals. Palin gets slapped with another scandal every time she pokes her nose out of her hiding place. The party is having trouble recruiting candidates, or demonstrating their relevancy.

And Miss California, our latest icon of family values, gets nailed for posing topless.

The message isn’t selling any better than the messengers. The gay bashers lose another battle, in Maine. A new CNN poll says Americans want government to take action on global warming. A new GAO report is shining a harsh light on Bush’s effort to gut the SEC. Bristol and Levi are squabbling publicly on teenage abstinence. A new Harvard study shows that the number of young Americans who have rejected religion has skyrocketed to 30-40 percent, demonstrating that the effort by the GOP-Religion Axis to recruit the next generation has backfired, turning young people off with the hate and intolerance. And the GOP has already lost the battle on establishing a national health care system, the issue which will guarantee Obama’s reelection: their only hope now is to try to stop or delay the public coverage option. All GOP efforts to dent Obama’s popularity – the tea parties, the attacks, the lies – have landed with a thud.

Oy.

This is what a party looks like, when it has no leaders and no message. In six months, they have made no progress – they’ve actually slid backwards.