Much of the East Coast is paralyzed today by a heavy snowstorm. Sort of like the way the government has been paralyzed over the last seven years by the Republican party. And sort of like the paralysis that now grips the GOP in the midst of the presidential campaign.

The party’s candidates are caught up in a right-wing frenzy that renders them unpalatable to the center of the country’s voters and assures them of a loss in the national election in November. The possibility of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz — or really anyone who has a chance of winning the nomination at this point — winning is nil. They are in their various ways very scary, ugly candidates.

Trump has become a consummate master of babble and bigotry, while Cruz is the dark prince of repellant and unprincipled ideas. There is hardly much better that can be said of others, all of whom base their campaigns on appeals to right-wingers in the party’s base, the very same base that has directed the Republicans in the Congress on their sadly effective pledge never to cooperate with President Obama.

This is a political party that has no business in government. And if it proceeds to nominate one of these incompetents for President, it will lose and will be out of the governing process once again. Yes, the Republicans will still control the House of Representatives with their Tea Party crazies, but a Democratic victory in the presidential race will almost ensure a Democratic Senate, too.

That, of course, would be a positive step for the process of governing the country. And governing the country is something the Republican abandoned seven years ago, a decision reaffirmed by their leading candidates in this election. What a shame. The country would benefit from a healthy political debate over many difficult issues. The Democrats would be a better party is they had genuine adversaries to confront over the best ways of governing. For now, though, that seems a chimera. About as elusive as intelligence among the Republican presidential candidates.