Republicans - what is your plan for staying competitive in the following states

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

50 state strategy, let each state party do its own thing.

Avoid controversies at the national level that would undercut that and embrace a state's right's position where possible to further facilitate it and preserve unity.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Adopt the Canadian Tories approach to winning over minorities:

1)Accept that Hispanics generally don't go for abortion/gay marriage social conservatism and adopt a "family first" approach. This would include lots of rhetoric about small business, hard working families, and insinuating that the Democrats are patronizing elitists.

2) Adopt big government conservatism with lots of targeted tax credits and allowances. Ex: Child care allowances. This meshes well with the rhetoric in #1.

3) Not sure how feasible this is in the American system, but adopt a much more disciplined communications strategy. Adopt a unified, disciplined message and stick to it. Try to avoid Akin moments.

That would not work here by and large.

There was a lot of talk about taking a "Libertarian-Populist" approach over the summer and so forth but I haven't seen anyone really try to attempt it at all. That is probably where the greatest millege is, railing against the both big gov't but also big business to the extent that it is facilitated by the gravy train. Only Sarah Palin and a few others have come close to doing this and she lacks the discipline you mention in 3 to make it effective.

Big Gov't conservatism is dead. That is what Bush promised and it didn't work out to well for anybody. I also don't see Huckabee getting the nomination and he is the best chance for that to happen at this point, but he is far to social conservative.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The money is already flowing to Hillary Clinton from typically GOP donors thanks to the shutdow and such forth. The problem is that if you don't offer them a bone on something, they will just slide over naturally to that pro-business wing of the Democratic party and you cannot compete without a billion dollars minimum.

If Hillary were to lose to Schweitzer or better yet some urban far left type. Than a Republican endorsing Manchin-Toomey but no other forms of gun control, and running a McDonnell style campaign could make big gains in the suburban tracts, without losing the money and without losing the necessary rural turnout amongst social conservatives and NRA types.