This is must read stuff for any conservative leaning soul who believes the GOP is lost and confused and incapable of conjuring up a coherent and workable strategy for containing and countering the growing liberal ascendancy and that therefore the country is probably doomed - well, doomed may be a bit much - let's say increasingly locked into a seemingly inevitable decline - which is sort of the same as being doomed since an America that is not preeminent is more a thing of sadness than anything else.
Now it is possible this 'it's all downhill from here' scenario for the GOP is overstated - after all it's a virtual certainty that ideological blindness and arrogance and cupidity will cause the left to overplay it's hand resulting in moderate, common sense liberals and independents becoming increasingly sceptical of and disenchanted by Obama and all he represents [see Mrs O at Oscars for glaring, gag inducing example of this] - and the media and press may grow weary of their emasculating relationship with the administration and consequently actually start talking about its flaws and blemishes in terms that suggest critical objectivity is not a lost trade craft for the left leaning intelligentsia. Why just yesterday venerable lefty Bob Woodward assigned to Obama a species of 'madness' for the way he has acted in regards to pending sequester - watershed moment for the media viz their incestuous love of Obama? Doubt it, but we'll see.
Still, the last election laid bare some serious problems and threats facing the GOP and raised legitimate questions regarding whether republicans have the wherewithal to answer and address those problems - changing demographics, a culture that is increasingly liberal in its mindset and default behaviours, a biased media that has demonstrated under Obama that it is quite willing to throw away any pretension to integrity and objectivity if it believes a socialist nirvana is up for grabs, structural economic changes that have nothing at all to do with how bad a president Obama has been and threaten to do away with the notion of a contented, well fed, prosperous middle-class sharing in the wealth of the country, thus leading to increased inequality and the resentment and instability that comes with it - all these things pose serious threats to the long term viability of the GOP.
But it's the highly sophisticated electoral wehrmacht described in article referenced above that delivers the coup de grace here by drawing all these negative strands together and weaving them into a death shroud for conservatives. Democrats have for many years now drawn core strength from the poor, minorities, immigrants, women and youth, people dependent on the good graces of a nurturing government for either survival or emotional satiety - but it's the digital warmachine that is turning this sympathetic union into a juggernaut of woe for the GOP. And the big problem for the GOP is, sure, they can go out and copy the operations, the strategy and tactics and logistics of this electoral wehrmacht, they can do the whole sabermetrics thing and the exquisite fine tuning of messages and voter data bases etc etc - they can copy all that and maybe in the end approximate liberal successes with such - but the big problem for the GOP is that there are two key elements in above equation that cannot be usurped or imitated: changing demographics that favor the left - and media bias.
And I continue to believe that media bias is the real rat in the cellar [?] here - it's one thing to target Hispanics with a certain message in a certain way in order to coax them out to that voting booth - it's one thing to tell them that if they don't get out and vote for Obama the evil, privileged white guy will win and he'll take away their healthcare so that they die in the street and then with a sneer of contempt he'll ship back to Mexico the ones who manage to survive - sure, that's clever and all - but to me without a media bias authenticating that message, lending it a legitimacy, the tactic becomes a much less viable thing.
Now, yes, republicans can make a more concerted effort to nominate media friendly candidates and that will help - this is why I said last year that I suspected that the only potential GOP nominee who had a chance of beating Obama was Christie - so being smarter in that regards can certainly mitigate the media disadvantage - problem is I'm guessing that to really take the sting out of that bias the GOP is going to have to shove social conservatism off to the side and I see no way of that happening. Case in point - Mitch Daniels - when he was considering a run in 2012 and sent out the trial balloon of calling a truce in the 'culture wars' I reckon he did so not because it was a good idea in general but rather because he knew he had no chance to win the nomination nor subsequently any hope of beating Obama without such a guarantee - and sadly of course the mandarins of moral absolutism promptly shot that balloon down and Daniels walked away. Conservatives will forever be fighting with one hand tied behind their backs if quality candidates like Daniels cannot get through the primary process without having to constantly parade their social conservative bona vides garishly about.
I wonder if this is what explains Christie's actions - he's almost gone out of his way to antagonize the uber right so that one imagines that there's now no path to the presidency for him that runs through a GOP primary - but possibly he felt that was always the case regardless and he's trying to craft a third way for himself - or maybe he thinks the only way to force the GOP into a needed self correction is by drawing the extremists out into the open in order to put their ultimate vulnerabilities on display, thereby laying before the conservative establishment a stark choice. Look what happened when CPAC in a fit of pique refused to invite him to their big party later in the month - several big time conservatives stood up and said they were acting like fools. To me Christie is too good of a politician and has made too clear his desire to be president for me not to see a method to his madness here.
