Republicans are apoplectic about Healthcare.gov, the official Web site for the Affordable Care Act.

They are trying desperately to change the subject from their disastrous government shutdown by ranting about the failures of a government Web site that cost a tiny fraction of what was lost as a result of the shutdown.

Republicans are pretending that they care about the problems encountered in signing up for a system that many of them are bent on destroying.

They are demanding an immediate fix to something they want to break.

They are trying to deflect public outrage away from their record-low approval ratings.

The only problem for Republicans is that a technical issue isn’t likely to have legs. Yes, it’s embarrassing. Yes, it’s frustrating. Yes, it’s an unforced error.

But it’s also fixable, and in the grand scheme of things, a malfunctioning Web site is more understandable and less consequential than a malfunctioning political party.

The Web site will be fixed. Can the same be said of the party that has planted its flag on the outskirts of reason? Can the same be said of the party being hijacked by hyperpartisans?In the long stretch of history, Obamacare will be judged on the merits of the policy, not the rollout of a Web site. That judgment will be sober and thorough. And along the way, as some things work and others don’t — as is the way with ambitious laws — things will be tweaked. But this is the law. It will be implemented, even over the wails of Republican resistance.

If Republicans are correct, that the law is the abomination that they say it is, it will be borne out in due time with jobs killed and premiums raised. If however they are not correct and the law succeeds, that will be borne out with a healthier, more secure population living longer lives with better financial futures.

In a way, it is the latter that worries some Republicans most — that the law will succeed over their Chicken Little, sky-is-falling naysaying. They need the law to fail to validate their enmity.

So they have focused their attention on a technical hiccup and tried to spin it as a symptom of systematic incompetency — if the Obama administration can’t run a complicated Web site, it is incapable of managing a complicated policy. But this logic simply pushes beyond credibility. As the president said Monday: “Let me remind everybody that the Affordable Care Act is not just a Web site.” The Web site is only a part of the whole.

But to many Republicans who are stuck fighting a battle that’s already been lost rather than moving on to the next challenge, this Web site problem offers a sliver of hope that they can turn people off from the law. So far, it isn’t working. According to a Gallup poll released Wednesday, there has been an uptick in support for the law since the Web site opened.

Sometimes you simply have to accept reality, and sometimes that reality is accepting defeat. Learn from it. Grow from it. But first you must admit it. That’s the modern Republican Party’s problem — blindness to the obvious.

The Republican Party’s conduct during this period in the country’s history will get the same sober, thorough judgment from history as the health care law, and that judgment is not likely to be kind.

History will record that this is the moment that the party camped out in its own graveyard, hastening the demise of its national viability; that it gave up on America, while constantly reminiscing about America as it once was; that its thought leaders were replaced by crusade leaders and the Grand Old Party saw its grandeur subside; that it came to realize that it couldn’t forever be the party of intransigence in a nation of progress, without being burned by the friction inherent in those two warring concepts.

This is the moment when the rest of America realized that opposition isn’t an idea, and preventing things from getting done is not the same as getting things done.

The Republican Party isn’t going away, but it is going down, and it seems unable and unwilling to stop the sinking.

In history’s view a problematic Web site is likely to barely register. But the problems with the Republican Party will loom large.