I represented, as an attorney, 1100 people who were arrested INSIDE the abortion mills, who put the mills out of business one day at a time, de-sterilizing instruments, blockading the killing rooms, pouring broken eggs and other contaminants into the suction machines used to kill the babies, and, in the case of shopping center mills or office building mills, generally disrupting all other business operations in such locations, rendering the mills persona non grata with their neighbors and landlords. The clients were charged with felonies such as burglary, felony criminal mischief, resisting arrest by police (sometimes ridiculously charged as assault on police officers). None were convicted of felonies. A handful (less than 30) were convicted of anything, a small number of misdemeanor criminal trespass and more of infractions that were non-criminal and the legal equivalent of parking tickets. A small handful of those convicted of criminal trespass were "incarcerated" for a week or so after conviction in a country club location without locks inside or to the outside world. Paid vacation hanging out with their friends and colleagues courtesy of the taxpayers. Virtually none would sign probation papers or pay any fines or court costs. That was as it should be. They were doing the government's job that the government was too gutless and too Godless to do. We call this an exercise in Natural Law.
To change the platform and views of the Republican Party and turn the clock back to the GOP baby killer days of Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater and others would be the suicide of the GOP. I guarantee you that ANY weakening on the issue guarantees that pro-lifers will abandon the party en masse. See how the GOP collapses without its pro-life base.
You don't have to compromise on "cultural and economic" issues you find important. If there is a divorce entered that separates the economic conservatives (if that is what they are) from social conservatives, social conservatives can easily drop affiliation with the GOP, dump the elitist economics (It's "class warfare!!!) approach, lose the political baggage of what FDR used to call the economic royalists, and really work the ghetto and barrio both of which are taken for granted by the Demonrats and despised by the GOP-E and the "cultural and economic" conservatives.
Then the "cultural and economic" conservatives will be left to do what? Try to make a deal with the Demonrats to lower their taxes and eliminate business regulation? Not very likely. Try to convince the Demonrats that they must resist the Hispanic Peril? Not at all likely. Fade into obscurity like the Federalists and Whigs before them, both of which parties died of elitism and greed and of despising ordinary people? Very likely.
That does not mean that genuine economic conservatism will die, just the elitist variety. If capitalism, as explained eloquently by Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman, among so many others, is to survive, I cannot emphasize enough that it will depend on the ability and performance of capitalism for poor people who choose to learn it and use it. The Hispanics in Northern Illinois with whom I am familiar are often natural born entrepeneurs. First generation Mexicans strive to take two or three jobs to have economic surplus to start their own businesses, fixing cars, doing construction and rehabilitation work, groceries, restaurants. They are keenly aware of the need for steady employment, good credit and economic performance to gain the trust of bankers and others serving the business community. They want their kids to be utterly fluent in English to compete successfully in the American economy. They understand that capitalism is not a zero sum game. If they win, they will also spend and create other winners. As Milton Friedman wrote, the great thing about capitalism is that no dollar on its way to his hand ever asked if he was a Jew or discriminated against him in any way other than to ask whether he had competently performed so as to EARN that dollar.
Those whose big ambition is to close off the borders and deport 11-25 million Mexican "illegal" immigrants cannot go Democrat. That party will not have them. If the GOP turns against them, then they may a) be discouraged and stay home (as I did regarding Romney for every issue I care about) and weep in their Chateau Laffite Rothschild 1929 or even their Budweisers with no hope of any success on their issue, or b) try to build a third party without much in the way of institutional support from any significant institutions other than a handful of designer foundations and permanently marginalize themselves and their issue, or c) stay in coalition with defense conservatives, military interventionists, pro-lifers, pro-family (i.e., anti-perversion), education reformers, gun folks, the seriously and conservatively religious, and maybe get border closure and enforcement in the future but NOT deportations, but they will also have to agree to stop alienating Hispanics. I think that c) is the only sensible alternative but, hey, that's just me.
Pro-aborts are heavily invested in the Demonrat Party. As a practical matter, they aren't about to join the GOP as a group. They have fully drunk the Demon-flavored Kool Aid. They are also immoral servants of the actual Demons and respectable folks of religious conviction rightfully will NOT ally with them. Likewise the lavender queens. Economic conservatives who are economically literate will not want alliances with environmental whackos or with much of today's AFL-CIO or with teachers' unions at any level, or most college professors (at least as an interest group), feminazis are taboo. Many other groups can be added.
Our political system has matured and the lines separating the coalitions are hardening. You and I may disagree but, while the Demonrats have a BIG head start over the GOP with the poor, they have delivered little that is worthwhile. The poor should not be satisfied with a welfare check, a housing subsidy, medical "access," in exchange for which they are to sit down and shut up and get out of the way of their affluent white "betters" who run the Demonrat Party from a verrrry upper, upper, middle class vantage point. "Give the boy a penny" is like "Jobs Available, No Irish (or Mexicans?) need apply" Neither provides long term satisfaction to poor folks. The blacks and Hispanics are the only sizable blocks of voters who can be moved to the GOP from the Demonrat coalition.
A new socially conservative, economically "moderate" coalition expressed as a political party has a potentially great future. A "culturally and economically" conservative GOP has no future. That is especially true when you recognize that "cultural conservatism" has little to do with nationalities of origin or ancestry or even primary language group and everything to do with MORAL conservatism. Therefore, you are really talking about "economic conservatives."
Your third paragraph is just wrong, wall to wall. Romney is a poster boy for spoiled rich brat Republicans of inherited wealth. He did not get ambushed by Demonrats putting those 47% remarks in his mouth. It was Jimmuh Cahtuh's grandson who anonymously attended a "private" Romney fundraiser for the GOP-E where Romney felt he could be himself. Once so convincingly convicted of despising so many Americans out of his own mouth, Romney failed to get 50% + 1 out of the remaining 53%. Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! And let's face it, that remaining 50% included some lavender queens, some environmental whackos, more than some kill the babies activists, some additional feminazis; some "peace" activists, some communists, some Islamofanatics, some Hollywierd activists, some anti-God activists, etc. Of curse, there is considerable overlap but there are also substantial numbers of the 53% who fit into one or more of these categories.
Romney is and always has been a two-faced political cripple. He is a serial liar whose sole political principle is a sense of entitlement to be POTUS to avenge his father's dashed dreams. He is crippled by HIS ancestry since George Romney was his father and Lenore Romney was his mother. Both were pro-aborts, inter alia, BEFORE Roe vs. Wade despite their vaunted Mormonism.
Some of us who are not Mormon might have voted for Mittler if he had been a better Mormon. Many would not vote for him because of the establishmentarian stench and accompanying cluelessness on sooooo many issues that matter. Do you remember even one occasion when Mittler admitted that Romneycare was a grave mistake and the inspiration for national Obozocare? Neither do I.
If Mittler is a poster boy for "economic conservatism," what would an economic liberal look like? Harvard Law School or not, neither Mittler nor Obozo have a clue as to the Constitution either. Both attacked the Catholic (and other pro-life churches) Church with their abominable "medical care" programs, forcing employers to pay for abortion on demand, abortifacient "birth control," other forms of birth control, late term abortions, sterilizations and "sex change" operations. Assuming that the gummint has any business sticking its infernal and inefficient nose into "medical care" in the first place, maybe the gummint can limit its scope to actual medical [problems and not to eccentric lifestyle faux care. No death panels and no "transgender surgeries" or baby killing or other morally barbarian abominations. Both are gun grabbers. Both are reprehensible on just about every issue that counts other than the border.
That we cannot track down ALL of the "illegals" is not a real concern of mine. I am not an egalitarian. I don't want ANY of them tracked down other than those who have committed real crimes which does not include petty theft, or border crossing without one's busybody gummint-issued "papers," or any "crime" reasonably diagnosed as a result of corrupt Mexican national gummint framing non-favored people. I would limit trackdowns to respectably convicted violent criminals and a few other types of convictions.
We have more than enough home grown abortionists, and more than enough home grown lavender queens, and we might want to trade them in to, oh, Finland for upstanding folks who might be yearning for temperate weather. We should trade any suspected Islamoterrorists to Saudi Arabia for a few barrels of oil each.
In Europe, for instance, the focus of the political right wing is not on moral issues nor even on economics, but on culture. This culture is defined by language, ethnicity, shared history, shared folklore, etc. In the US, we don't have quite the same foundation for this, but we can still speak of some people who can culturally assimilate (speak English, adapt to the general ethos and values of the society rather than living and acting as though they're still in Nairobi or Guadalajara) and other who can't or won't.
I would say that I'm a cultural conservative first, a fiscal conservative a distant second (I deviate from libertarians on trade issues), while moral conservatism isn't even on my radar screen. Why? Not because I condone immorality, but because I don't believe that most of the supposed hot-button moral issues people talk about are the province of the State. I think that most people would agree that cheating on a spouse is a despicable thing to do. That being said, any Presidential candidate who makes stopping adultery the centerpiece of his campaign would be laughed off the podium, and rightly so. I apply the same reasoning to drug use and homosexuality. I don't particularly relish the company of drug addicts or homosexuals, but that doesn't mean that I don't recognize how utterly contrary to the spirit of personal liberty our (failed and hypocritical) "war on drugs" or anti-sodomy laws were.
As for abortion, the fact is that while most Americans don't support no questions asked abortions and (rightly) question the Constitutional legitimacy of Roe v. Wade, most voters, especially women, would not support an outright ban on the procedure. Now, I'm not saying that this means you or anyone else have to compromise your views on the issue to pander for votes, just recognize the fact that a hardline stance on abortion scares away many people with conservative views on other issues just as my views on immigration may scare away some of your beloved Hispanic voters.
I would also add that the Catholic position of opposing BOTH pre-conception both control and abortion is self-contradictory. The fact is that abortions are fairly rare among middle class Americans and common among the lower classes, especially among blacks. This isn't because middle class white kids have less sex than lower class black kids, it's because they are more likely to have enough foresight to prevent pregnancy. Premarital sex, including teenage sex, has and always will be with us, it won't be legislated or preached away. Within the boundaries of this fact, our alternatives are a) millions of pregnant single teen mothers with little support and no economic prospects for themselves or their children, b) more abortions or c) pre-conception birth control. By preaching against c, the more hardline members of the Catholic Church give us a), and, ironically, more of b) instead.
I also can't understand why you insist that all fiscal conservatives are either trust fund brats or corporate fat cats. I'm neither - my family wasn't wealthy, and I'm not wealthy either. I simply recognize that "soak the rich" economic policy will probably harm me in the long run more than it harms the fat cats. They'll just move their wealth (and businesses) overseas and lay people off here to offset the burden. Directly or indirectly, the fat cats pay the salaries of people like me, and it's in my interest that they keep as much of their wealth to spend and invest here rather than abroad or in hidden accounts to avoid the IRS or the SEC.
In an earlier post, you lumped libertarian-leaning fiscal conservatives in with sleazes like Karl Rove as "GOP-E". Rove, and indeed the entire Bush administration, represented one of the worst instances of the corporate cronyism and expansion of government power that are anathema to fiscal conservatives. If most of the same policies were carried out by Democrats, few would notice the difference.
Incidentally, I found it supremely ironic that people who were all gaga for Bush found Romney unacceptable because he was "rich," "spoiled," and a member of "the elite." Bush was hardly a character out of a Horatio Alger novel, but none of the his populist supporters ever held his blue blood or family dynasty against him - this in spite of the fact that Mitt Romney at least earned some of his wealth himself, as opposed to having it all handed to him. So when it comes to matter of elitism, perception usually trumps reality.