Sam Tanenhaus has a great sense of humor. Four years ago, he came out with a piece about the demise of the conservative movement, which at the time — with Obama elected by a 7-point margin, supermajorities in the House and the Senate — didn’t seem that unlikely. The problem was that by the time the book appeared some months later, Obama’s poll numbers were plunging. The Tea Party movement had risen against him, and the table was set for the 2010 midterms, which cost Democrats the U.S. House and brought in a wave of brand-new conservative leaders.

Now Tannenhaus is tempting fate once again, claiming that the GOP has been steeped in the ethos of John C. Calhoun, a Democrat and an antebellum defender of slavery. He does so at the exact moment when a 41-year-old Hispanic senator has emerged as the major new voice of the party, and weeks after the daughter of Indian immigrants, who now runs Calhoun’s home state of South Carolina, appointed Tim Scott to Jim DeMint’s seat in the Senate as the first black Republican to sit in that body since 1979.