re: #48 Eclectic Cyborg

And therein lies the same problem that finished Romney off in 2012.

He had jump far to the right just to get the nomination, then once he had it, in an attempt to appeal to a wider range of voters, he started moving towards the center. However, in doing so, he effectively alienated the crazies, some of whom voted for third party candidates or did not vote rather than vote for Romney.

It’s quite the paradox: Anyone will HAVE to be far right to win the GOP nomination, but there’s no way in hell a far right candidate can win the general.

How do you reconcile that? The GOP needs to figure out how to deal with this now in the early stages of the game. However, I suspect it will take another November drubbing before they finally wake up.

They don’t have any good choices really:
1) Nominate a “true” conservative and probably get completely trashed in an election. Though they will probably still get 35-40% of the vote.

2) Stay the course of nominating a “moderate” who alternately runs right and then left and hope to luck into winning an election by timing it just right.

3) Attempt to send their radicals back into the wilderness by triggering a schism and sticking to establishment candidates and re-initiating actual compromise-based politics and seriously trying to compete for moderate and minority votes (including supporting actual policies along these lines and not just the usual lip service.)

I suspect it will be #2 since that continues to hide the issue and eventually enough of the electorate might get tired of electing Democrats POTUS. (Or the Democrats put up a really bad candidate.)

#3 is probably what is necessary for the long term for the GOP. But that will involve lots of teeth gnashing, in-fighting, and probably 10+ years of being a electoral minority while they rebuild and try to make in-roads in territory that is now solidly Democratic. This is probably also what is best for the country in the long run since it would start to re-establish two parties that can and will cooperate to handle legislation.