Possible New GOP Coalitions

[Person Man]

They really have two major options for gettable voters:

1. The Midwestern Strategy- this would be a narrow R win with these voters

This would be the long-sought-after Republican breakthrough in the Rust Belt.  I'm not sure if MI or MN would be the last non-IL holdout, but I went with MI because it has a more diverse electorate.
 
2.  The Minority+Yuppie Strategy

This basically represents a return to the Bush coalition, but it is accomplished by being less socially conservative on the whole. 

Prior to the election, the GOP seemed to be concentrating on the first strategy.  Romney was trying hard for this in 2012 and he basically ignored/took for granted the Bush-Obama states in the process.  After they got burned with that plan, they seem to be shifting gears back toward the 2nd option.     

In order to win by peeling off middle class and brown-ish voters, they will have to be in a condition to offer them an "in" to the entire Republican "thing". For example, in the early 2000s, credit was still pretty good so you could speculative opportunities to be a Republican without that much income or wealth. After the credit crunch, in order to gain back these groups, the Republicans will have to start talking up easy credit again. To me, that will be the sign that the Republicans are going after a Rovian strategy of throwing the Dems off balance instead of expanding their own base.

[Person Man]

The United States is becoming as secularized and as cosmopolitan as Western Europe, and the Republican Party will have to mold themselves in the shape of Europe's center-right parties to build their next coalition.

Just curious here, but what does a CDU or UMP coalition look like?

Your question made me think a bit. Germany, as a parliamentary system based on proportional representation does not build coalitions within, but among parties. As such, I first thought there is no point in answering your question.

On second thought, it might be instructive to sketch the German party landscape a bit and point out at coaltion options that are being discussed here.

CDU:

• Catholic roots-> moral values, but downplayed (no discussion of abortion, gradually moving towards acceptance of gay marriage, etc.). Family focus, gradually opening up towards new forms of partnerships (patchwork families) and single parents. Introduced a public financial allowance for parents that don't work during a child's first eighteen months, under the condition that each  parent takes at least three months off from work (which gained them quite some acclaim also from feminists). Otherwise on-going in-party struggle about child care (more early childhood kindergardens, or extending allowances for parents that are staying home with their children).
• Struggling to find a balance between national-conservative positions and its own tradition as immigrant party (catholic Polish pre WW I immigrants, post WW II refugees) -> now gradually moving towards liberalising immigration, also under labour market / demographic considerations
• Pensioneer's party: Trying to maintain current pension levels by putting most of the financial charges on Gen Xers, try to keep health care affordable and available to all,. Also implies strong law & order focus.
• Rural / small-town/ sub-urban, with white collar / public servants focus, even though reaching out considerably into the blue collar segments-> Focus on free trade, austerity / balanced budgets, (road) infrastructure development. No major social security reforms Moderate, but progressive income taxes. If tax increases are (deemed to be) required, they are carried out on the consumption side (VAT, tobacco, gasoline etc.).

SPD:

• Protestants (this may be astonishing, but take a look at the German electoral map from a 'normal' year, i.e. not 2009, and you can still easily recognise most of the borders drawn in 1648 after the War of Thirty Years): This implies in general more socially moderate to liberal positions
• Blue collar, with significant outreach into white collar and the public sector: Pro-union, maintain / expand social security, advocating higher top-level income taxes. Less focused (though not unconcerned about) balancing budgets. Traditionally pro-coal.
• Urban / sub-urban: Stronger focus on public service provision, public transport, but also in favour of major infrastructure projects. Quite some law & order focus.

They are what I tend to call the "Hillary Clinton / Joe Biden wing" of the Democrats.

Greens:

• Urban, college graduated: Focus on education, public transport, sceptical towards large infrastructure projects, privacy / data security / civil rights-minded.
• Female:Women's right, support for single mothers, facilitating the balance between motherhood and professional careers, etc. Also implies a strong focus on consumer protection and food safety.
• Second / third generation immigrants (especially from Turkey and the mid-East): Asylum rights, EU expansion, liberal immigration laws etc.

Essentially the Obama 2008 primaries wing of the Democrats.

Linke: Conglomerate of a regional party for East Germany, and a left-wing party in the West. The East German wing has quite some similarity to Appalachia DINOs, but a higher relevance for the German balance of power.

FDP: Traditionally a similar profile as the Greens, now mainly a small-town and small-business / self-employed party. Economically and socially liberal, focus on lower taxes, small government, but also civil rights, privacy, gay marriage. They call themselves liberals, you would call them libertarian.

Newly emerging are the Pirates, which are essentially a younger and more male version of the predominantly Gen X and quite female-dominated Greens.

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The currently governing CDU / FDP coalition, which I see as a socially and economically moderated version of the Republicans, will definitely struggle and most likely not regain their majority in the upcoming elections. Neither will SPD & Greens (they may eventually form a coalition with the Linke, but that is also quite unlikely for a variety of reasons). As such, the main question is whether Germany will after the upcoming elections have a CDU / SPD (as from 2005-2009) or a CDU / Green coalition (as in Hamburg over the same period).  

As far as I, as an European, can tell, the Republican's options are along the same lines. They definitely have to get more urban and socially moderate  Beyond that, they may either go "social-democrat" (blue collar), which would imply moderating positions on budget balancing, social security / health care etc., or they may go "green" (postgraduate / second-generation immigrants / female), which would mean doing away with anti-intellectualism, pro-coal policies, anti immigrant rhetoric and the like. The "Linle" option (Appalachia) has already been tried but was obviously insufficient.

For the "green" option, Arnold Schwarzenegger's approaches in California might be worth looking into in a bit more detail.

So, basically pursue an "Ohio" strategy (CDU-SPD) of encouraging people to marry, have children, protect themselves and respect those who protect them ahead of any civil rights concerns, but being less aggressive against those who rely on the law and public funds to protect them from market uncertainty and extra taxes on those who can afford to pay them. The Government should foster innovation through military research.

This is what a successful map of that strategy would look like.

Basically, its a Huckabee/Bush type campaign

and the CDU/Green Coalition- basically a "Colorado" strategy of claiming that the less Government the better (even when it means a slight reduction of security) and that each community should create its own standards and have its own values and the only goal of the Federal Government is to allow for that possibility. The Government should foster innovation through public-private competition.

So, probably the former direction is more likely because it targets more big states.

[Person Man]

Another important issue I forgot to mention: The CDU is traditionally a Western (in the West-East Germany sense), southern-catholic, male-dominated party. Angela Merkel isn't anything of these: She is East German, northern-protestant, female. That's a quite important element of her success.

Along these lines, the next GOP presidential candidate should probably be female, from New England, the upper Mid-West or Oregon/ Washington, and ideally have either some Latino or Irish ancestry. [Yeah, I know, they tried that with Sarah Palin already, but that went wrong for a number of quite specific reasons ..]

....Kelly Ayotte? ...Susanna Martinez?  Basically a female politician that is about as conservative as W, but you would think that they are non-conservatives.

[Person Man]

What are they replacing the fission plants with? Fossil Fuels? Bio Fuels? Wouldn't that be an even less green alternative? Doesn't it go-

Brown
Coal
Oil
Methane
Nuclear
Solar/Wind/Water/Vulcanism
Green

Are they trying to expedite the thermonuclear demo plant in France?

[Person Man]

In terms of religious demographics, the Republican Party would be wise, over the long-term, to reach out to at least some of the members of the fastest-growing religious group in the American population-the "Nones." (Note: this group is NOT the same as atheists/agnostics, who IIRC, are pretty overwhelmingly Dem now-for understandable reasons, of course-but are too small a group to make much of an impact). How they do that, I'm not sure.

Beyond that, the GOP needs to improve its margins among Catholics (and not just white non-Hispanic Catholics...) and mainline Protestants. A party that is overwhelmingly dominated by White evangelical Protestants in general, because of the way that many evangelicals'(particularly the political ones )  aggressive and frankly, obnoxious style turns off non-evangelicals, will not be able to reach out to much of the population. Furthermore, the dogmatic, rigid beliefs of many evangelical Protestants (and the hypocrisy of many megachurch pastors ) also turn people away from an increasingly evangelical-dominated Republican Party. Finally, white evangelicals are declining as a share of the electorate.

Beyond this, I'm not sure what else the GOP can do. It's in a position where it needs to turn out both "the base" in large numbers while at the same time, not alienate "swing" voters.

You mean "stop being Republicans"?

[Person Man]

Look at any thread around this time in 2005 and replace "Democrat" with "Republican". Hell, I was convinced, at least until after the 2006 elections, that the path back for Democrats was to basically say "me too" in debates except for Iraq, Abortion and Taxes.