Long Term Viability of the Republican Party

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Even if you change on illegal immigration, that is only the foot in the door. Nominating a Hispanic candidate merely a foot in the door. The core message is what determines whether or not you win Latinos or any other group, not what your specific plan on a subset of an issue that only about 10% of the country lists as a top priority. It may be a piece, but those thinking it is a whole affair, are fooling themselves.

Before we start arguing between whether the long term direction is Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee (It is neither, people ), the Republicans need to look at their core values and principles and ask themselves, 1) Is this still a conservative country? and 2) Can we sell a conservative message of economic freedom and traditional values to anyone not currently in the mix?

One thing that most certainly has to change is the language. Frank Luntz has some great feedback on how to adapt the conservative message to a modern political arena language wise. It should be looked at pretty closely, for sure. One of the big ones he mentioned is to stop talking about preserving capitalism, which has become a code word for Maddoff and no one can connect with that, and instead talk about economic freedom and individual empowerment.

Next, if the values and principles can remain the same, 1) What policies actually advance those? and 2) What are just a legacy policy of days gone by? Ex. 1) Simpler, less burdensom tax code, 2) Bush tax cuts. Should we really sacrifice the movement's goals to continue a failed Bush stimulus program?

The GOP should bring Libertarians in and give them a seat at the table, but that doesn't mean you kick out the Social Conservatives or abandon them entirely. Coalitions require sacrifice to achieve shared goals. What the GOP needs to learn to do is stop playing the Sg0508/Ben Kenobi approach of demanding the other be kicked out and instead learn how to build and maintain a broad coalition of people.  The party doesn't have to abandon the cause of life, it needs to change the strategy and rhetoric. MO and IN Are Pro-Life states. They didn't reject Republicans because they were pro-life, they rejected them because they were insensitive idiots. Gets back to the language issue. Perhaps also not pushing this "no exceptions" stuff, might be a good idea as well, especially at the national level.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

All I will say at this point is this: It's not Republican "packaging" that will give them much broader minority appeal. It is Republican policies. If Republicans want to gain minority votes and gain women votes they need to fundamentally change their approach to public policy. Redesigning your look is not a long term strategy to fix this problem. Fix the way you absorb information and substantively alter your policy approach.

It was packaging in IN and MO. It was campaign quality in VA, WI, ND and MT. It was campaign quality and packaging in the Presidential race. That gives you a Romney presidency and a Senate majority. Whatever you do, it matters short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Whatever policies you advocate for and principles you offer and continue to adhere to, if you can't sell it, no one will care how good what your offering is. Republicans need to listen more and ask more questions, rather than giving answers and assume people will automatically know those are the right ones.

We are never going to agree on what the "offered items" should be. We have fundamentally different views of what this country is and where it is heading. And somehow I am fairly certain that your vote will never be on the table.

The GOP will remain a conservative party. There will be a some policy changes because different times call for new ideas. For years I  have said that I would love to see them drop this FMA bullcrap and pursue Civil Unions, go back to humbler foreign policy, find a happy medium on regulation (a big mistake on Romney's part was calling for the repeal of Dodd-Frank and not offering an alternative that addressed the root problems, with far less negatives on the economy).

On immigration, the Republicans should have moved quicker to fomulate an alternative Dream Act that satisfied the concerns expressed (even extreme NumbersUSA founder Roy Beck was willing to embrace a Dream Act, provided it met certain standards). They also should have spent more emphasis on reforming and improving the legal process, establishing a guest worker program in conjunction with E-verify and so forth. Obama was vulnerable on all sides of this issue and Romney didn't effectively take advantage of that below the surface of the overall campaign focused on the economy. Romney also got much too close to SB1070 for comfort and got butched in the AZ hispanic vote (Romney could have won that state by 16-20% had that gone differently and gotten into the 40's in that group, which is a more natural number for Republicans since AZ Hispanics are historically more Republican then the nationwide numbers).