America finally understands Obamacare.

Day after day, the president’s signature legislative achievement is proving to be the federal fiasco everyone predicted it would be.

Every Democrat – including the president’s liberal cheerleaders in the media, the Democrats in Congress and Bill Clinton – knows it’s become a major political disaster for their party.

President Obama has scuttled his party’s future with his foolish Big Government health care scheme. See you later, Democrat Senate. Kiss President Hillary goodbye.

But, unfortunately, Republicans and conservatives are too busy attacking one another to take advantage of Obama’s great gift.

Look what happened to Gov. Chris Christie after his blowout 21-point victory this week in New Jersey.

Winning a Democrat state by 61 percent, Christie put together a perfect Ronald Reagan coalition by attracting 51 percent of Hispanic and 21 percent of black votes (including almost two dozen influential black pastors and politicians, and 2012 Obama-backer Shaquille O'Neal.)

So what reward did the mighty Battleship New Jersey get from his fellow Republicans? A bunch of torpedoes in the side for not being conservative enough to become the party’s nominee in 2016.

If we Republicans are going to keep on infighting and looking for the perfect conservative candidate, it’s not going to matter how terrible things get in the country, or how many more disasters Obama brings us, we’re not going to win back the presidency.

The Republican Party has an awful lot of major repair work to do if it hopes to become a winner again.

Its leaders can’t allow a repeat of the suicidal primary of 2012. It has to pick its nominee early.

It can’t allow eight conservative candidates to stand up on a debate platform and try to be more Ronald Reagan than one another – and then be surprised when the most moderate candidate wins because the conservatives split the rest of the vote.

As Gov. Christie says, we have to stop putting up Republican candidates who can win the ideological argument during the primary but can’t win the election in the fall.

Republican voters have to do their part, too.

America is in the horrible shape it’s in, and Barack Obama is still president, because too many conservative Republicans didn’t go out and vote in 2012 because Romney wasn’t the perfect candidate.

If they hadn’t stayed home, we’d be looking at President Romney today instead of Mr. Romney.

If Republicans and conservatives want to regain control of Washington and repair the damage done by eight years of Captain Obama, they’ll have to nominate a governor in 2016.

As George Will said on Fox the other night, and as I’ve said for a long time, America does a lot better when we elect a governor to the presidency.

No matter what their party, governors do a better job because they already have executive experience.

If you want to see what we get when we don’t put a governor in the White House, turn on the TV or check the headlines in tomorrow’s Washington Post.

Republicans have many capable conservative governors ready to clean after Obama’s shipwreck. Besides Christie, there are Rick Perry of Texas, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and others.

I don’t know who’s going to be the GOP nominee in 2016.

But whoever is nominated, until everyone in our party understands why Ronald Reagan always supported all of the GOP’s nominees, we’re not going to win the next election and the next and the next.

Copyright ©2013 Michael Reagan