Free Republic

Given the reality that I know at least half a dozen people who would instantly abandon the Republican party to a mode ‘True Conservative’ party - I agree there is opportunity!

But here is the problem:

One of my friends view’s “True Conservatives” as taking a black/white stand on ending the drug-war. Another views “True” as defending “Traditional Marriage”, while another disagrees and demands that “Marriage” be completely and utterly eliminated from all Government Documents. (etc, etc)

And on the Small Government / Fiscal front...

I will not vote for anyone who is unwilling to end Foreign Aid, reduce our out-of-control Department-of-Offense / DHS which spends a Trillion+ dollars a year to ‘attempt’ to protect us from everyone we piss-off by getting into their business all the time!

But many of my friends (and yes, we get along) wouldn’t consider any party as even remotely “Conservative” if they didn’t Increase our alliance with Israel and strengthen our commitment to Military spending and “projection of power”...

So my question to Sara is “Which definition of ‘True Conservative’ is she talking about?

Wow, what a wonderfully insightful summation of Christian Sectarianism!

(Not that I am disagreeing with your point)

Mormon’s, Midwestern Evangelical’s and various different Charismatic Christian movements seem to be able to cope with each other as compatible political partners for the Republican’s(when the Evangelicals can avoid calling Mormonism a Cult)...

While Northeastern Catholics and whatever you want to label the various ‘liberal minded’ denominations (Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, etc.) now have a tendency to vote Democrat, which the Catholics being very hesitant due solely to Abortion.

The US is still vastly Christian in its religious affiliations... but from a political perspective ‘Christians’ are no longer a voting demographic that moves one direction in the polling booth.

But what that means is you have to get 100% of the additional 10% that would vote.

Additional Women would have hurt Romney, because Obama won in the group. Additional youth vote would have hurt just as badly.

You have to find enough older men from rural area’s to show up... and most of us did show up!

Every one of my friends and coworkers went down and voted.

You need to start including a plan for the kids or you are just kidding yourself. There will be even fewer of us in 26, and many, many more of them!

I have stared at the numbers from 2012 from various different directions, and have come to the conclusion that no route leads to the WH without grabbing a sizable influx of the younger crowd.

Turnout just isn’t going to get it done in 16. It might gain seats in both houses in 14, but even that sets up a pendulum swing in 16 from blowback...

And while Rand isn’t my favorite, he is the only candidate that ‘might’ be able to leverage some youth vote. Cruz will swing the youth vote farther left!

Cruz is seen as an ‘old-school’ conservative by anyone over 45, and that just doesn’t sell the story to any of the voters that went to Obama in 08 or 12. Rand ‘might’ be able to get voters that went Democrat last time... Cruz will only get the same crowd that came up short last time.

And while Rand won’t inspire the Evangelical crowd, I doubt he would inspire them to let Hillary win by default!

The ticket has to find a way to GAIN more voters, and stop trying to preach to the choir...

‘True Conservatives’ make up over half the party, but the party makes up less than half of the voter base... so ‘True Conservatives’ can’t deliver national elections by themselves.

The problem with the numbers is that unless we got extraordinarily lucky with exact placement of about 5M votes - just in the right states - you wind up needing a bit more than 4M...

You need to take Ohio, Colorado, Virginia and Florida... plus a few more.

And you have to do that while retaining Georgia, NC, Arizona, etc... so if the base is constantly being ‘purified’ of classes of Republican voters who aren’t ‘hard-core’ enough to suit everyone’s needs then the problem isn’t ‘growing the numbers’ but ‘stemming the drop’.

Each day the numeric advantage held by ‘older upper middle-class white voters’ (like me), is growing smaller. And the numbers of younger and minority growers is increasing...

So when you want to talk ‘winning’ through growing the white-conservative vote, you have to ask yourself ‘from where’?

The vote was split 60/40 in the Republicans favor for older men over 45, but break-even for women and favored Democrats below 45... so the ‘Growth’ would have to come by finding a 4M (using you numbers) advantage in the +45 white-men category.

And to accomplish a 4M+ with at 60/40 split then 20M more have to vote... which is hard to imagine.

And that assumes that moderate Republican votes don’t wind up staying home or switching over.