How would you fix the Republican Party?

[TJ in Oregon]

How on Earth are the Republicans not friendly to Catholics? Not only do they have about half of Catholic voters but the evangelical religious right voters even backed one as their candidate in 2012.

BRTD, I doubt most of the GOP primary voters knew Santorum is Catholic.  The crap that spews from his mouth is the same stuff the right-wing evangelicals have been at for decades.  Even living in the Philadelphia media market, I've always had to be reminded he's not a Protestant because he looks and talks exactly like one.  Not only that, but past Catholic candidates have been OBVIOUSLY Catholic.  The Kennedys, Kerry, etc. 

As an aside on Santorum being Catholic, when I was in Cleveland Santorum went to Mass for the Feast of the Assumption at the Italian parish I used to go to when I lived there. (The Feast of the Assumption was a big deal in this parish; it was a several day long event complete with a solemn procession through the streets.) When I walked into the church only 15 minutes before Mass started, which is normally plenty of time, but not on the Feast of the Assumption when there are like 8 bishops and everyone's distant cousin back in town, I overheard two old ladies in front of me chatting and one told the other that Senator Santorum had just arrived. The other turned to her and asked "Is he Catholic?".

[TJ in Oregon]

That being said...if the problems with the modern GOP have a serious point, it's the obvious one that the modern GOP is absolutely unsuited to be a majority party rather than an opposition party.  This last sentence probably sounds incredibly obvious even to the Republicans on the site.  With a great many off the leash Congressmen on the GOP side getting reelected without any support from the national party due to their R+40 districts, they'll have no incentive to pass the agenda of President Christie or whatever, and there's no party discipline re: respecting the party leadership.  When random GOP Congressmen and maybe even Senators (Ted Cruz) spend the first few months of a President Christie's tenure bashing the president for being insufficiently conservative, the problems of the modern GOP will become obvious.

The solution to this part is actually being in power. A lot of those R+40 protest vote types are doing what they are doing precisely because they are in the opposition. Having someone in office of their own party, even if he has to make compromises, will give them someone and something to actually be for instead of being against everything. I know sports and politics aren't quite the same, but if you've ever been on a team that's winning and a team that's losing the mentality here is the same. When things are falling apart and the team is divided against itself, it looks like even if they were to somehow win they'd still be a dysfunctional mess. But the cure for that is often to be winning so that all its members can stop pointing fingers at each other for all the ways things have gone wrong and focus on working together. Winning cures a lot of ills and many of those bitter protest votes can be softened by having someone to rally around instead of against.