Stuffy Old Men: Region, Religion, Race and Class Define and Buffet GOP

[babylonsister]

Stuffy Old Men: Region, Religion, Race and Class Define and Buffet GOP
by Lloyd Green Mar 31, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
The once-Republican Solid South is starting to look like a blue-and-red checkerboard, writes Lloyd Green.


Given what the Republican Party is and where America’s demographics are heading, it is unclear whether the Grand Old Party can successfully pivot to the center without jeopardizing its socially conservative evangelical base. Electoral competitiveness remains elusive for Republicans as singles and younger voters have migrated to the Democratic Party. The GOP is also shackled with the legacies of Iraq, Katrina and the crash of 2008 that have led many to view Republican competence as oxymoronic.

So at best, the party is barely treading water. A recent PPP poll shows both incumbent Senator Marco Rubio and former Governor Jeb Bush trailing Hillary Rodham Clinton by double digits—in Florida. Putting things in perspective, if the Republicans do not win Florida, they cannot re-take the White House. Indeed, with Florida, and Virginia — another state that Barack Obama carried twice—the once-Republican Solid South is starting to look like a blue-and-red checkerboard, with Democrats now owning some of the biggest squares.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is far from agreed that it even has a problem. In fact, intra-party schisms were vividly displayed at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, to which New Jersey’s popular governor Chris Christie was not invited. Instead, CPAC attendees heard Donald Trump do his usual rich guy-tough guy routine, and listened to Sarah Palin extol her husband’s and her own physical endowments. Okay for reality TV, perhaps, if not so much for serious national politics.

The Republican National Committee further added to the party’s woes by releasing its 100-page campaign autopsy—as RNC Chair Reince Priebus so memorably described it —acknowledging that “voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents” and lamenting the perception of the Republicans as the party of “stuffy old men.” The report also pointed to the party’s disconnect and competitiveness problems, the insularity of the party’s national agenda and Republican deficits in campaign technology, data gathering and voter targeting.

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/31/stuffy-old-men-region-religion-race-and-class-define-and-buffet-gop.html

[JNelson6563]

1. Yet they hold many states.

Gawd knows the R's have a stranglehold on Michigan. This state is so gerrymandered I don't know how we're going to overcome it.

But these articles on how the GOP is done for, yeah, they ignore the 800# elephant in the room.

Julie