Obama will win or lose by a small EV margin or win by a large EV margin

[redcommander]

The term "Blue Firewall" really isn't justified. Just because certain states haven't voted Republican since Reagan and HW Bush doesn't mean that the GOP is unable to win their electoral votes. The reason Republicans have sucked so recently in Presidential politics is because they put up a decrepit Senator in 96, a Neo-Con in 00 and 04 who had no cross-party appeal, and another decrepit Senator in 08 only with a loon as his running mate to top it off. Perhaps for 2012 they should be thinking of getting Gregg, Daniels, Ryan, Portman, or perhaps someone else currently out of there that is out of the spotlight besides the unappealing field of Pawlenty, Huckabee, Romney, Palin, Pataki, Barbour, etc.

[redcommander]

The term "Blue Firewall" really isn't justified.

Eighteen states and DC all rejecting right-wing Republican nominees for President in three contiguous (or nearly-contiguous) groups... that's one chance in 2^95, or a number with 28 digits. The states are clearly similar in political culture. Before 1992 they were not all reliably Democratic; indeed, as late as 1976 Jimmy Carter (barely) won election despite losing nine of them.  Can you convince me that Jimmy Carter was that different from Bill Clinton in ideology?

Even two of the "near miss" states (Iowa, New Hampshire) seen to fit the pattern -- and Carter lost those. New Mexico, the other,  has no good analogue, and Carter also lost it. Go figure. Carter relied heavily upon southern states drifting R.

To start winning more than a handful of elections for President, the GOP must find nominees who don't have glaring weaknesses as candidates.  

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... and an incumbent who in 1992 had nothing more to achieve.  But why did the pattern seem to take hold then?

Maybe the GOP has increasingly relied upon Christian fundamentalists for the vote because they can be attracted with few costs. Just keep promising to be more strident in support for guns and such no-cost goodies as school prayer and an abortion ban. That constituency isn't going to demand higher wages that would cost the corporate sponsors of the GOP real money or force deficit spending on something that doesn't turn a profit. That constituency is shrinking, and in view of the deaths in 2008 of televangelists D. James Kennedy and Jerry Falwell, losing its organization and political cohesion.

New England, the Middle-Atlantic States, the Pacific Coast states other than Alaska, and the Twin Cities-Chicago-Detroit triangle have comparatively few evangelical or fundamentalist Christians or Mormons. The GOP has bet heavily on white Bible-thumpers and lost what used to be the liberal Republicans.  Need I tell you that except for Hawaii (not yet a state) and DC (not voting until 1964)  all of the states that ever voted for Gore or Kerry voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956?

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Nice try. That assumes that every one of the sure losers of 2012 will so divide the Republican convention that the GOP will have to turn to a non-participant in the primaries or an early loser to get the candidate in the so-called "smoke-filled room". Even the best of them could be ill-prepared to face a well-funded, well-organized machine. It is also possible that the winner of such a consensus could be someone with glaring faults as a politician -- let us say George Allen or Rick Santorum.

The Blue Firewall fails only if President Obama fails as President. 2016? I am not making any bets.    

If one or more of those candidates runs that I mentioned, Romney, Palin, Huckabee, and all the other leftover 2008 presidential wannabes being touted currently won't have a chance of winning the nomination.

[redcommander]

No it was pretty much that Bush was unappealing to Democrats and Independents by 04.