Thanks for your post. Great reading as usual.

Also, the idea that the more conservative party can ever appeal to LGBT is laughable. That demographic group hates married whites, hate the middle class, and are the biggest bullies in politics. Any conservative who panders to LGBT will lose more votes than they gain. Pandering to homosexuals is a losing idea for conservatives since homosexuals want a powerful big federal government that can be used for social engineering purposes.

Bruce,
Basically, there needs to be enough Republican support so a same sex marriage bill can be passed. Yes, it would piss off social conservatives but the party could get some respect from the LGBT community if enough Republicans dare to vote for it look at Rob Portman. The GOP should just go on no efforts to repeal same-sex marriage once it becomes law. So what if you lose some religious social conservative folks, last time I checked they were dwindling in numbers.

Can’t help but wonder if the liberal wing of the GOP held their ground and didn’t get purged out, would Republican support for same-sex marriage increase and would gay marriage have gotten passed sooner?

I remember your blog back when it was NeoMugWump and I still don’t get why you like Ross Douthat despite he has no respect for Moderate Republicans.

But what changed my mind was seeing that even civil unions generated opposition from the Religious Right, and in Virginia they passed a law that, in the breadth of its language, would possibly it has not been tested in this regard) ban even certain business contracts! Since the rationale for having two different names was to soothe the ruffled feathers of “traditional marriage” advocates, and it didn’t do so, I now think you might as well go all the way and extend marriage rights to all couples. I still see it as a step forward, however, to institute civil unions — this led the way to full marriage in Vermont, for example — when the choice is between nothing at all and civil unions.

I view a rejuvenation of an Eisenhower GOP about as likely as a well organized centrist third party … slim. Maybe if the GOP takes one more swift kick in the pants in 2014, it will wake up and smell the coffee.

Will be interesting to watch.

Why not try to shame blacks and Hispanics for their culture, their behavior, the the current state of their neighborhoods. Why shame whites for behaving better than blacks and Hispanics?

I also read articles about Arnold Schwarzenegger being reelected in 2006 (a good year for Democrats) with the majority of Asian-American voters and significant percentages of black and Latino votes just because he showed up and asked (his celebrity status also helped a bit). George W Bush, with all of his mistakes, understood inclusion and was rewarded for doing it.

I saw his election parties and speeches and I look at the diverse crowds and comparing them to the ones at GOP Presidential Race Parties and I always wondered “Why can’t the GOP think more like Arnold?”

I have noticed how moderate Republicans generally do better than Republicans when it comes to inclusion. Conservatives can win non-conservative groups if they just show up and ask. But they have marginalized by certain groups who should remain nameless.

The outreach bit has really been said for decades I’ve seen articles about it going back to the 80′s, but it took the party the loss in 2012 to realize that people wanted to be listened to and not written off and demonized to please a fraction of America’s population. I blame the Southern Strategy on that.

But the base however as much as I hate to say it isn’t open to it. Not all conservatives and Republicans are like this, but some think the GOP should just die before it becomes accepting of everyone else and write anyone who isn’t white for good (there are some people who have said that). Someone has been listening to too much Pat Buchanan. I’ve talked with some conservatives about reaching out and they see it as the equivalent of suicide. Not to mention what happened at CPAC shows conservatives aren’t willing to get out the bigots.

Sooner or later, the GOP has to decide: a shrinking base or the future? I’m not holding my breath for the latter until the GOP loses in 2016. If the GOP dies and a new conservative party comes out of that, I can’t see the extremists leaving the new party or going away.

Another thing is both Kean and Arnold as seen as RINO’s, that’s a bigger problem. I really hate that word. To me, it’s intolerance of a different opinion. The RINO hunters always go after the Republicans that try to appeal to people beyond the base.

The best possible way to go is slowly get into communities, while we’ll lose the Southern Whites and the Religious Right, we can get more voters and be able to win in states long thought lost forever.

In a nutshell: Show up and ask for the vote, we’ll lose some white conservatives, but we’ll be able to represent America for once and not just one segment of the population. It won’t be easy, but it’s worth it.