The GOP has won and will continue to win if you look at it this way.

Apart from the Presidency, the Republican Party is sitting pretty in the 22 or so states they dominate. They've gerrymandered those states ruthlessly & passed laws designed to suppress Democratic voting blocs--especially blacks.

So they're created a kind of New Confederacy among those 22 states, able to resist Washington's efforts to civilize them because they can rely on their representatives in Washington to block nearly anything a Democratic President and Senate majority tries to do to them. They can't lead the nation through the Presidency & a Senate majority, but they've ensured that the nation can't lead them either.

They did this by using the rigidity & extremism that moderate conservatives and some political observers--such as the NY Times' Charles Blow--say is a problem for them. But it's only a problem if they still believe they can dominate America. If they're content with dominating the New Confederacy and hamstringing Washington from affecting their domain, it's a winning strategy for them, just as it is.

And since their voter base is undereducated, aging white men and their wimmenfolk, mostly imbued with a brand of political Christianity harsh enough to justify calling them the Republican Brotherhood, it's easy to get their base to believe anything that fits their fears and prejudices.

"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, & dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, & unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
-John F. Kennedy