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With the number of House Republicans retiring at 17 and counting -- compared to four exits on the Democratic side -- there are few GOP prognosticators who dare to say that their party has any chance of regaining the majority it held in the House from 1994-to-2006. Simply put, the mathematics just aren’t there.

But one little-noticed fact may have a major impact on Republican ranks in the House after ’08, no matter what their numbers: that with so many of the seventeen including prominent moderate GOPers, odds are strong that the trend toward the terms “Republican” and “conservative” becoming mutually inclusive will continue after the next election.

It won’t happen, but the time may be sooner rather than later that an election cycle leaves the term “liberal Republican House Member” a phrase to describe an extinct species.