Can the GOP win back surbubia?

[Mechaman]

Yes.

Get a time machine and go back to 1973 and kill the people who formed Moral Majority.

[Mechaman]

When the Moral Majority crumbles and the GOP becomes more Romneyesque, yes.

How would Democrats counter? Would we go for the South again?

If I were to guess the Democrats would revert back to being the anti-elitist party and start portraying the Republicans as the party of grey poupon.

[Mechaman]

Wait a minute, why would we campaign on the GOP being the party of mustard?

(laughs)
Good one.
I mostly got this from a quote from Wayne's World where Wayne asks these crusty old rich dudes if they would like some grey poupon in a British accent.

The biggest problem I see with this strategy of alienating social cons and becoming more moderate is that moderate Republicanism has often been associated with the image of rich WASP elitists.

In other words, the Democrats could create the New Deal Coalition, Mk. II.

[Mechaman]

On a really good day, maybe Mitt Romney could do that. But, republicans can win without them.

Oh?

Yes, republicans can win without suburbs.

They really can't. Not without some suburbs, anyway.

Republicans can’t completely ignore the suburban vote. There just aren’t enough people left living in rural areas anymore to build a coalition like that. Suburbs are strange political entities because they vary a lot from city to city in their voting tendencies. They tend to include more voters who are willing to pull the level for a member of either party depending on who they think would be a more qualified leader. The GOP needs to realize that by holding positions that are becoming less and less popular, we have to hold our party to a higher academic standard when it comes to the things our leaders say. The era of swaths of rural land where people are disconnected from news and information is over. We need to find people who hold conservative positions who, if some landed from Mars having no knowledge of US politics, would appear smarter and more qualified than their opponents.

Almost every swing state in the nation is decided by suburbanites. Heck, with how often liberals complain that suburbs are terrible places it should in theory be rather easy!

We can win with around a minimum of a fifth of the suburban vote.

Do you have any kind of reasoning behind that "one fifth" or did you just pull it out of your ass?

Yeah, seems kind of crazy really.

The GOP NEEDS suburbs.

And trying to reach into urban areas might not be a bad idea.  Hell, the most ancestrally Republican area in my state is Tulsa County.