Washington, D.C. -- Following a weekend during which a Republican Senate candidate asserted that only rape victims who wanted it will get pregnant, news surfaced that a Republican Congressional delegation to Israel took part in a skinny-dip in the Sea of Galilee, and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan remained the presumptive Republican nominees, the Party of Lincoln rolled over and died of embarrassment today.
Paramedics called to the scene at Republican National Committee headquarters were unable to resuscitate the Grand Old Party, despite the application of CPR, defibrillators and smelling salts. RNC staffers had already tried waving photos from a 2010 donors' trip to a West Hollywood bondage club.
"There are limits to what medical science can do," said Dr. Steven Gottshalk, chief of emergency medicine at George Washington University Hospital, where the GOP was pronounced DOA. "Remember, these people nominated Sarah Palin for vice president, right after eight years of George W. Bush as president. Eventually, choices like that catch up with you."
Dr. Gottshalk cited a previous history of problems that he said probably contributed to the GOP's sudden collapse from "acute mortification."
"Look, it didn't start with (Senate candidate and rape parser Todd) Akin, (Congressman and Galilee skinny-dipper Kevin) Yoder, Romney, Ryan, Palin, or even Bush," said Gottshalk. "As far back as 1964, this party nominated Barry Goldwater -- and then followed up with Richard Nixon!"
"It was a long, steady decline," he continued, "punctuated by acute episodes like race-baiting, Iran-Contra, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and my lord, one weird sex scandal after another."
"After Bush started a war with the wrong country and broke the world economy, a lot of us thought they were finished. But they held on, and frankly I think you could call that a medical miracle," said Gottshalk. "Then we had birtherism, Glenn Beck, Orly Taitz, Jan Brewer, Christine O'Donnell and Donald Trump, plus the Republican Congress trying to force the United States into default on its debts. I thought, 'surely this it it.' But incredibly, they held on, and put forward the most deeply ridiculous field of presidential candidates -- including Romney, Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum and Cain -- that this nation has ever seen."
"I think that may have been what really did them in," he said. "Mitt Romney for President, Paul Ryan for VP, and now the rape and skinny-dipping-in-the-Galilee stuff -- really, just signs that the end was finally near."
"You've got to to hand it to them, though, they were embarrassing right up until the end," Gottshalk concluded. "No matter what the cost, no matter what appeals to simple rationality they faced, they always stuck to their guns."