A cigarette, perhaps?

A phrase people have used to describe the Republican Party right now, which became an instant cliche, is "circular firing squad."

After years of taking deadly rhetorical aim at its liberal foes, the GOP is embroiled in one of those intramural cross fires that often follow a good ol' country thumping.

They're petty and predictable, the squabbles among McCain campaign insiders seeking to salvage their careers by leaking anecdotes about, for example, who made Sarah Palin "go rogue."

Beneath that roiling surface, though, a far more thoughtful, interesting set of postmortems is going on among some conservative writers. Essayists and think-tank denizens provided the intellectual fuel for the Republican Party's rise; now they must help it rebound from its darkest day since 1964.

In fact, some began the effort even before Election Day, anticipating the day of reckoning and churning out books this year that mixed autopsy with clarion call for reform.

The dimmer bulbs in this crew settle for the canard that George W. Bush failed because he wasn't conservative enough, citing heresies against orthodoxy such as No Child Left Behind and the Medicare drug benefit. They ignore that W. executed more of the conservative agenda than even the sainted Ronald Reagan did.

These folks risk making the same error they long mocked in liberals - learning nothing from failure, settling for a solution of "do it again, only harder." That is, more tax cuts, more deregulation, more culture warfare, only with sharper claws.

Smarter analysts realize the problems go deeper than Bush's ineptitude or McCain's bad luck. They see what voters saw: Much of what's gone wrong for the nation has to do with flaws in the tired creed of endless tax cuts, deregulation, partisanship and saber-rattling.

Let Ross Douthat, a crisply cogent conservative blogger for the Atlantic, sum up what many activists are writing right now:

"[Their] arguments all seem to boil down to something similar: If it were more like me, the Republican Party would be better off. It's failing because it's like you."

Douthat himself did a far better job of analysis in his book, Grand New Party (written with Reihan Salam). It's one of the best of the "how to get our mojo back" genre, focusing on how to deploy conservative principles to benefit the "Sam's Club" working class, rather than simply using wedge issues to recruit them for Election Days.

David Frum, a brilliant if somewhat unprincipled chameleon, also says interesting things in Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again - where he makes the case that key conservative goals should include (sit down now) universal health coverage (through private markets, of course).

Michael Gerson, the gifted speechwriter who for a while made George W. Bush seem an inspirational leader, establishes in Heroic Conservatism that he, at least, truly believed the soaring stuff about compassionate conservatism he wrote for his boss.

These books all grapple with a central conundrum that last Tuesday underlined:

Conservatism, as practiced by the Republican Party in the last four decades, was never an entirely coherent, consistent program. It was a pragmatic, and very successful, alliance among disparate outlooks. They managed for a long while to work together, for three main reasons.

First, they were united by disdain for a common enemy: liberalism. Second, the genial genius, Reagan, wove durable myths that cloaked the fissures between them. Finally, once they got power, divvying up the spoils was far more fun than arguing about the divides that separate free-market libertarians from social conservatives from messianic neoconservatives.

Now, as a consequence of overreaching and bad behavior, the party's big-enough tent has collapsed.

Here's the new status quo, as Douglas Kmiec put it in a brisk online dialogue among conservatives on Slate.com:

"Welcome to the wilderness. It is time to think, rather than grouse or govern."

Some conservative thinkers - particularly those such as George Will, Kathleen Parker, Christopher Buckley and David Brooks, who broke ranks over the Sarah Palin nomination - seem eager to get down to the hard work.

Others would rather just fit Palin for the mantle of savior, apparently content with a rump conservatism that is small-town, resentful, anti-intellectual, and lily white.

Barack Obama must be quietly saying to himself: Go ahead, make my day.

They do get cold, those nights in the wilderness. Some respond by curling into the fetal position, soothing themselves with bedtime stories. But others look upward, trying to see deep into starry skies.