For conservatives to make inroads into the "blue" states, they need to motivate and expand their core. They need a message which resonates with both the core and those in the middle. You probably don't remember the watershed election of 1994 (Newt's "Contract with America"), and you were not alive for the equally pivotal 1968 and 1972 elections (Nixon's southern strategy). Your perspective is from a time when the "solid South" was nearly solid Republican. I can remember when the opposite was true, and when Democrat majorities in the House were expected. In fact, there had never been a Republican Speaker of the House in my lifetime until Gingrich.
Your ramblings about a "lost cause" New England are not unlike those who bemoan "global warming." Neither of you look at the big picture and take into account periodic fluctuations.
Yeah. The problem arises when that "core" is too small to control much of anything in the electorate, which results in a state government dominated by liberals and RINOs...in other words what we have in every single New England state save New Hampshire, which is starting to trend the way of its neighbors.
They need a message which resonates with both the core and those in the middle.
That's a nice theory, but it presumes that there is a substantial middle to begin with. When 60%+ of a state enthusiastically backs an outright communist for president and similarly liberal candidates for all the other offices the state is lost beyond anything that appealing to the "middle" will get you. The "middle" in New England gives us Lincoln Chaffee and Jim Jeffords and neither of them is anywhere near my idea of a good thing for the republican party.
You probably don't remember the watershed election of 1994 (Newt's "Contract with America"), and you were not alive for the equally pivotal 1968 and 1972 elections (Nixon's southern strategy). Your perspective is from a time when the "solid South" was nearly solid Republican.
You presume a lot, capitan. The south shifted because it had an underlying core conservative constituency, even if that constituency at one time voted Democrat. Most southern democrat elected officials reflected and shared to some degree in that conservatism. Since you mention the 1972 election, do you remember who was racking up win after win after win in the Democrat primaries that year? We tend to forget it since the assassination attempt ended his campaign and the party swung to the hard left with McGovern, but the answer is George Wallace. While Wallace was not without a great many problems, his candidacies always appealed to southern conservatives much as Goldwater's did before that and Strom Thurmond's did before that. Yes, part of it was racial but another often overlooked part of it was not, the last two of those candidates having represented open and public hostility to the hippie leftist counterculture that was emerging in the 1960's. The anti-hippie, anti-communist, pro-America message resonated in the south back then. You do not have that same dynamic at play in New England today or anything even remotely close to it. New England is hardcore leftist through and through with the best we can ever do there being an occassional rare win plus some "me too" style RINOs.