The airwaves were full of talk last week—mostly hot air, in fact—from the far right wing of the Republican Party, where some people are upset that John McCain appears to be well on his way to being the GOP nominee for president this year.

That just won’t do, screamed right-wingers such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Alan Keyes. McCain’s not conservative enough to represent the Republican Party, they blathered, not on issues such as abortion, immigration, campaign finance reform (they oppose it) and gay marriage.

Well, let’s stop and look at what’s happened in the past few months in the Republican race. There was anti-gay, anti-abortion former Sen. Fred Thompson. He failed to generate even a ripple of support and is gone. There’s former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who’s pretty much proven to be a one-hit wonder. He failed to win in two states—South Carolina and Florida—where substantial numbers of conservatives should have given him a decent base. He’s done, too, for all practical purposes.

Then there’s former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s tried to claim the anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigrant mantle. So far, about all he’s accomplished, when it’s all said and done, is to spend way more of his money than any other candidate en route to a series of losses.

Then there’s Keyes himself, a perennial failed political candidate who’s not even taken seriously enough by people in the GOP to merit inclusion in most debates.

To sum it up for the Coulters, Limbaughs and Keyes of the world, you’ve lost. Your arguments have failed, the American people have rejected your drivel and even Republican voters are saying, by a substantial majority, that they’ve turned you off.

We don’t know how your colossal collapse—from the heyday of the Reagan Revolution and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority to today—could be more clear.

The truth is that far-right scapegoating tactics have never played well with American voters for long. From the anti-immigrant rants of the Know-Nothing Party in the mid-1800s to red-baiting Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and the George Wallace-led, anti-black civil rights reaction of the 1970s, telling voters that all their problems are the fault of “those people” has proven to result—at most—in temporary surges that quickly lose steam.

This generation of scapegoaters is now heading to the same scrapheap of history as Wallace, McCarthy and the Know-Nothings. In 2000 and 2004 they used gays as scapegoats. This year, with their anti-gay act becoming too stale to captivate voters, they’ve turned to the anti-immigrant card. Well, it ain’t working.

While McCain is no Harvey Milk, we can take comfort in knowing that the efforts of Huckabee, Romney, Thompson and Keyes to play to anti-gay sentiments failed to find many takers in the Republican primaries. And while it’s not the full marriage equality that we want and will achieve—sooner rather than later—the endorsement of civil unions by all the Democratic presidential candidates has raised hardly a twitter of opposition from voters.

What we’re finding out, in reality, is that support for GLBT rights, including marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, is closer to being a mainstream stand in American politics than the anti-gay posturing of the far right.

That, folks, is progress. Welcome to the 21st Century.