So this is actually quite funny: in yesterday's City Section, here, is a report on the efforts by republicans to stave off the imminent death of their party.

It looked like an exam room for an S.A.T. A week ago Saturday, in a small conference room in a hotel in Bayside, Queens, rows of tables stood covered with neatly laid-out papers. The type of people filing into the room, however — mostly middle-aged and older — suggested otherwise.

This was, in fact, the first Candidates’ School of the Queens County Republican Party, where Republican hopefuls, in a city and state dominated by Democrats, had gathered for a crash course from campaign experts and party leaders on how to become better candidates.

You can have the best candidates imaginable - virginal Nobel Prize winners cum war heroes cum volunteers at the local homeless shelter - but they will founder on the deeply unpopular message which they must of necessity represent; brand GOP is dead in New York.