After reading three pieces today...

...that deal with the future of the country and the Republican Party (by Frank Rich, Jonathan Chait and Mark Leibovich), I feel compelled to share my own prediction of the future. Ready?

The economy is improving and will continue to improve, no matter which candidate -- President Obama or Governor Romney -- is elected next month. Whoever is in office for the next four years (or eight, if Romney wins) will get credit for the recovery. (I still think it will be the president, based on Intrade and FiveThirtyEight. They're the best; everything else is just noise.)

Assuming President Obama is reelected in November and the economy recovers in the next few years, his popularity should go up, right? (See: Reagan, Ronald.) And the Republicans -- the tea party in particular -- who oppose him will lose favor with the general public. As a result, moderate Democrats should stand a good chance at unseating some of those GOP House members in the 2014 midterms. So right there, the Congress should get more moderate, more sane. And in 2016, in an effort to win back some of those seats, the Republicans should run more moderate, establishment-type candidates.

So, if the president is reelected and if the economy recovers, then the fever in Washington should break in the next few years. The president should be able to strike deals with the GOP leadership much in the same way that Ronald Reagan was able to do with Tip O'Neill & Company in the 1980s.

Now, even if Romney is elected I suspect the economy will recover and the extremism of the tea party will simply fade away as the economic emergency passes. (Prosperous times are usually accompanied by ennui.)

Either way, the tea party is destined to be a relic. In five or ten years your kids will ask you, "What was that whole tea party business about anyway?"