Last week marked a sad chapter in American politics. The poorly conceived Republican plan to “replace’’ Obamacare was doomed from the start. The bill, the product of nearly eight wasted years of just saying no without coming up with an alternative, foundered on the split personality of a segmented and divided party that can oppose Democrats’ view of progress but cannot function constructively in power.

The Republican Party had a distinguished history of abolishing slavery, saving the Union, helping to secure civil rights legislation, and arguing for fiscal restraint. The last two months show that that chapter is over. The proposal’s cruelty to the disadvantaged and its redistribution of wealth to the well-off are the final proof that today’s Republican Party is so opposed to taxation and social programs, and so deferential to racism, sexism, and immigrant scapegoating, that it has codified its abandonment of its founding principles.

Perhaps this loss could lead to compromise and aisle-crossing and a real chance to govern this country. Perhaps a populist moderate splinter of Republicans will now step up and ally with Democrats in a third party. Or perhaps Republicans in power will now actually tackle the many dilemmas this nation faces, which require rational solutions, not cynical slogans.

Or the party can choose to remain as it is, secure in power but frozen with internal division, chained to the twin pillars of its devil’s bargain — a blind belief in a market system that was hijacked long ago by wealthy oligarchs, and a cynical adherence to Nixon’s Southern strategy and to giving comfort to virulent nativism.

Grand Old Party? No longer. And our nation is the poorer for it.

Daniel Malis

Cambridge