North Carolina and Republicans' push to the extreme right

[Non Swing Voter]

The only thing that worries me is whether or not Republicans will aggravate voters in North Carolina to the point it could slip away in a presidential election or force our party to spend more resources there than necessary.

You're not worried at all about the blatant gerrymandering or disenfranchisement attempts? 

Yes, your point is probably correct.  That's exactly why Republicans won't win Virginia in a Presidential election for at least 20 years.  They pushed extreme measures over the past few years just as the state started becoming more moderate and diverse.  I suspect North Carolina will follow a similar pattern.

That is assuming the Democrats nominate someone like Obama, the GOP nominates someone like Romney and the political climate and the political coalitions will remain the same the next 20 years. So your statement is based on a lot of assumptions that are uncertain, at best. If 2016 (or 2020) is a bad year for the Democrats, and the GOP nominates a decent candidate, the Republicans will probably win Virginia.

Absurd comment.  A generic democrat would have beaten a generic republican in Virginia.  In fact, right before the election there was a lot of talk by right wing pundits about how weak Obama was. 

Your reply was inapposite.  I did not make assumptions, nor did I even discuss Obama/Romney in the post you quoted.  You seem to assume I am basing this off 2012.  OK - well that wasn't a particularly good year for Democrats and Obama still won Virginia.  The fact is that Virginia has been trending Democrat for the past 20 years, regardless of Obama being on the ballot.  Yes, it's possible that if stars align that Republicans will win Virginia.  But in the next few cycles, given the population trends, that would probably mean Republicans are winning handily. 

I posted census projections and articles about the demographic changes in Virginia in another thread.  Basically, by 2016, Northern Virginia, suburban Richmond, and the Virginia Beach area will account for something like 90% of the population growth in the state.  Obama won all three regions.  Northern Virginia will account for over 50% of the statewide population growth, Obama won that region 60/40.  Conversely, some regions of the state are losing population, mostly they are small towns concentrated in the southwestern portion of the state.  Republicans tend to win that region 70/30. 

Clearly Republicans have a long term problem in Virginia that is getting worse every year.

By all means, if things continue the way they are now, the GOP will have a tough time winning Virginia in a neutral political environment. I am not arguing about that. However, political coalitions tend to change. And when a party has been defeated enough time, they usually change course somehow. By the late 1980s the Democrats knew they a lot of voters viewed them as the party of big government, abortion and welfare queens. So they nominated Michael Dukakis (who really wasn’t the “Massachusetts Liberal” as he was portrayed by the Bush campaign. He was a moderate.). Then they nominated Bill Clinton, and the rest is history.

The same thing goes for the Republicans of today. Some sort of change will occur if they lose enough times. And that was the core of my critique of your post, because it looks like you assume that the trends of today will continue indefinitely.  Suburban moderates in Northern Virginia will keep voting for the Democrats, because the Republicans are too extreme on social issues. That is probably the case today, but it might very well not be in 2024.

And that is before we take into account frictions within the Democratic coalition. There might be important issues where suburban liberals are at odds with Africa Americans, or where the interests of the public sector unions clash with those of working class Hispanics. And whenever that happens, the opposing party is usually ready to accommodate the people that are disillusioned by the other party.

American political history is full of false realignments, coalitions that never became permanent and trends that ceased. In 1988 a lot of people believed the GOP had a “lock” on the Electoral College, because of their strength in the Sunbelt states, and that the Democrats had a “lock” on Congress. It took 6 years for that to change. And in the beginning of the 1920s people knew that African Americans would continue voting for the GOP, and that the South would forever be the Solid Democratic South. By 1928 the Republicans were able to win several states in the South, and African Americans became an important part of the Democratic coalition under Roosevelt a few years later. So the GOP might turn into a permanent minority, unable to win places like Virginia and North Carolina (and eventually Georgia and Arizona), but I think that is unlikely. 

That's fair.  However, The GOP has lost 5 of the last 6 Presidential elections in terms of the popular vote, most by fairly large electoral/popular vote margins... and they are now further to the right than they were 20 years ago.  So it seems very unlikely that they will change course by 2024.  In fact, the trend lines indicate they'll probably be more extreme by then.  They lost the senate in 2012 because of extreme candidates and now they've nominated Cuccinelli and some even more extreme people in Virginia.  Rather than admitting they are losing badly, their main arguments are: voter fraud, the polls are skewed, and that not enough whites voted in the last election.  They clearly have not learned anything and I doubt they will anytime soon.