"'It kills me' to not be President..."

[robertlouis]

Frankly I don't know if any Republican can win a national election right now because in order to win the nomination during the primary process they have to feed their base on all their "red meat" issues and non-whites, people under 30, women and the LGBT community all find the "red meat" issues to be "rancid meat" policy.

Sadly for the Republicans they don't get it, most blame the loss on a bad candidate or bad media but the election IMHO was a rejection of bad ideas. In spite of gerrymandering they lost seats in the House and in spite of having the Senate seats up for grabs looking to be to their advantage actually lost ground in Senate.

America is not going to get any more old white male as time goes on and 2012 was their last, best shot to run on many of their policy positions and win. They were running against and incumbent with unemployment around 8% and income inequity at an alarming rate and they just got their asses kicked.

It wasn't just Mitt, in fact if Romney was able to run as moderate Mitt through the primaries and the general election he may have beaten Obama. It certainly wouldn't have been an electoral college drubbing.

But the Republicans prefer to live in their bubble.

The big test will come when the first tranche of Tea Party Republicans come up for re-election next year. If they are rejected, sanity just might prevail in the GOP, unless they commit the sin common to all parties who lose badly that it wasn't the message that was wrong, but the packaging.

[bluesoul]

Romney must have given me that thumbs down...or one of his now silent minions lol

... or michelle malkin lurking in the ha cyber shadows

[fivekatz]

The big test will come when the first tranche of Tea Party Republicans come up for re-election next year. If they are rejected, sanity just might prevail in the GOP, unless they commit the sin common to all parties who lose badly that it wasn't the message that was wrong, but the packaging.

The thing is that a whole lot of the congressional districts in the US were reconfigured after the last census to create a lot of bubbles where Tea Party candidates can still prevail.

The gerrymandering has created a situation where the House Representatives can and does look entirely different than what a National Election would produce in either the Administration or the Senate's composition.

Now when we combine a Republican House leadership scared to death of the Tea Party, the minority in the Senate equally afraid and willing to use cloture over 50 times a year to kill nominations and bills and Obama in the White House is total gridlock.

At best the GOP is being so idealistic that they are hurting the country, at the worst they are willing to hurt the country until the pain gets so bad they can take control of all the branches of the government.