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Let me get this straight. Akin and Mourdock, two Tea Party candidates, can't even win in Missouri and Indiana, both of which went for Romney by 10% margins, but you think a conservative Akin- or Mourdock-type candidate could have won the presidency. While I wish that were true, I'm gonna bow to recent experience and say it's unlikely.

At the same time, I see your point. I think conservatives need a wake-up call about what is possible. We need to nominate a straight-up conservative ticket in 2016 and see where that takes us. If we re-run 2008's complete wipeout, it will lead the more intransigent among us to understand that you can't go home again.

Politics is the art of the possible. What is possible in red states is different from what is possible in swing states. If we require multiple shellackings at the polls to accept this basic principle, so be it.

Am I being defeatist? All I can say is that the Founding Fathers understood that democracy is a death spiral. Once the property requirement was removed from the franchise, ambitious politicians began buying indigent votes with other people's money. Reagan's failure to dismantle the Education Department one year into its existence shows that the death spiral doesn't stop even for the nimblest of politicians. Ultimately, we, the people, have pointed a pistol at our collective head. Every program the Dems gin up gets us in deeper. I just want to stand athwart history, yelling stop. Unfortunately, it just keeps hurtling into the abyss.

Am I being defeatist? All I can say is that the Founding Fathers understood that democracy is a death spiral. Once the property requirement was removed from the franchise, ambitious politicians began buying indigent votes with other people's money. Reagan's failure to dismantle the Education Department one year into its existence shows that the death spiral doesn't stop even for the nimblest of politicians. Ultimately, we, the people, have pointed a pistol at our collective head. Every program the Dems gin up gets us in deeper. I just want to stand athwart history, yelling stop. Unfortunately, it just keeps hurtling into the abyss.

Great analysis. I don't think you are being defeatist. Merely realistic. Sad to say, the *only* thing that I think could save this country is for the inevitable economic collapse to be sudden, rather than gradual.

What is possible in red states

The GOP can start with not calling itself "Red"

The GOP needs to die.

“Let me get this straight. Akin and Mourdock, two Tea Party candidates, can’t even win in Missouri and Indiana, both of which went for Romney by 10% margins, but you think a conservative Akin- or Mourdock-type candidate could have won the presidency. While I wish that were true, I’m gonna bow to recent experience and say it’s unlikely. “

Nowhere in the ‘conservative handbook’ does it say that you have to talk about rape in dumb ways. You can be pro-life without making it about personal theology.

One of the keys to the success of two-term Democrats like Clinton and Obama is that they've simply mastered the art of standing up there and telling people whatever they want to hear. These aren't principled politicians by a long stretch, despite what we like to think (and they like to think, too).

For example ... in this election campaign cycle we actually saw Barack Obama stand up and claim that a massive cut in corporate tax rates was one of the cornerstones of his economic plan. LOL.

The key to winning elections in the age of "American Idol" is to cobble together enough voters who are willing to believe what you're offering them, and then turn it into a simple, stupid campaign theme.

Let me get this straight. Akin and Mourdock, two Tea Party candidates, can't even win in Missouri and Indiana, both of which went for Romney by 10% margins, but you think a conservative Akin- or Mourdock-type candidate could have won the presidency.

Post of the thread.

Sorry, folks; I'm not into RINOs either, but if you think that a strictly Conservative candidate in the mold of Akin or Mourdock will win nationally with this media controlling the narrative and this dumbed-down electorate responding like trained seals to Democrat propaganda, you're living in a bubble.

Akin and Mourdock?

Flawed arrogant stupid men who committed political suicide via foot-in-mouth. Whoever pushed them into candidacy committed political malpractice on the GOP

“We” have to do better and find truly good thoughful intelligent men and women.

In a nation of 300 million people surely we can.