[okie01]

It's a good strategy...That's why we have primaries and caucuses in 50 states rather than just the red states. We need more than red states to win the White House. In the blue/purple states, a lot of GOP voters are way more liberal, and the final nominee needs to be able to win their votes in order to have a shot at winning those states.

This strategy has worked so very, very well for the party in the past -- as amply demonstrated by the McCain and Romney administrations. As opposed to the failed Reagan candidacy, of course.

I'm sorry but, if a candidate can't get his own base out, he'll never win an election.

[Moonman62]

I'm sorry but, if a candidate can't get his own base out, he'll never win an election.

How about the GOPe strategy of blaming the base? Won't that work? They have some of their flying monkeys posting right here on FR.

[Zhang Fei]

I'm sorry but, if a candidate can't get his own base out, he'll never win an election.

They got the base out - they won the red states handily. They couldn't win the Rust Belt states (or the original snowbird state, FL), and that was all she wrote. No surprise there - no hard line conservative has won a Rust Belt governorship either. Rick Scott barely won FL in 2010, and that was an excellent year for the GOP. The electorate is moving left, and the irony is that the end of the Cold War has accelerated that move.

NC's governor, Pat McCrory, pushed through several laws social conservatives had been asking for. His approval rating is 37%. This tells me that Beverly Perdue's election victory was not a fluke, that the state's electorate is changing, either demographically or ideologically.