How far along is the GOP in the stages of grief? That’s the question in my latest column at RealClearPolitics:

If they’re in denial about what happened last Tuesday, Republicans will stick with both of the men at the top of the team that just led them to a crushing defeat: Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip. If they’ve made it to bargaining, they might keep one and ditch the other. But if they’ve worked all the way through their grief to anger, or even to acceptance, they’ll realize what they need to do to take their first steps out of hell.

They need to cleanse themselves of the sulfuric stench of the DeLay years, the K Street lobbying culture and the failure of President Bush’s big-government conservatism. And, to do so, they need to toss out both Boehner and Blunt in favor of the two men now running as Reaganite reformers: Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) for minority leader and Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) for whip.

If the GOP had held or lost the House by a narrow margin, there might be an argument for keeping the current team. They’re experienced. They know how to move legislation. They’re the Establishment.

But as the president said, the GOP took a thumpin’. Experience matters less now. The party doesn’t get to move legislation. And the Republican Establishment is what the American people just tossed out on its ear.

It’s time for Republicans to let go of their majority mindset and start thinking like a minority.

The return of Trent Lott to the Senate Republican leadership tells me they’re not too far along in this process. But, actually, I’ll let my N.Y. Post colleague Robert George have the last word on that:

“There’s something painfully ironic about Trent Lott being named ‘minority whip.’“

The South has risen again.