Former Sen. Jim DeMint, who left the Senate to make a pile of money scamming wingnuts through the Heritage Foundation, claims that the election of 2012 didn’t count because the Republicans never got their real message out and Mitt Romney sucked as a conservative.

DeMint thinks the election results don’t accurately reflect national sentiment and therefore can’t be used to argue against his desire to move the party to the right. True conservatism never got a hearing—particularly not in regard to Obamacare, which was, after all, modeled after a Massachusetts law signed by Romney. “Because of Romney and Romneycare, we did not litigate the Obamacare issue,” he says. Essentially, DeMint is declaring a mistrial. His side can still prevail, he says, but only by awakening the angry, alienated masses who were put off by Romney’s tepid impersonation of a conservative.

So much for the GOP re-examination, autopsy, and rebranding.  (By the way, as upyernoz reminds us, Romneycare, which begat Obamacare, was invented by the Heritage Foundation.)

The good news is that if the Republicans actually listen to Mr. DeMint — and the point the Business Week article is that he’s the one really calling the shots on Capitol Hill — it’s going to be a very long time before there’s another Republican president.