The reason the Republican Party has been incapable of developing and promoting an affirmative message is that the "evangelical" and "libertarian" wings of the party are wholly irreconcilable.

The Democrats had this problem. They had to pick between the "civil rights" wing and the "Dixie" wing. They opted, eventually, for civil rights, and lost the South that had voted Democratic for a century. In 1976 there were still a few left, but by 1980...

The Republicans need to decided if they are for small government or big government. If you are for small government, you can't be for a government that tells you who you can and can't have sex with, a government that wants to take control of women's bodies if there is a fertilized egg in them, a government which suspends the Fourth Amendment in the name of the War on Drugs, a government that wants to teach religion in science class, a government that wants to engage in foreign adventurism to build democracies abroad, a government that believes in torture, warrantless spying on US citizens, and massive giveaways to mismanaged businesses.

Look, white evangelicals aren't going to vote for a Democrat, because their ministers have spent the last 20 years telling them that they will go to hell if they vote for a Democrat. If the Republican party stops compromising its small-government principles on their behalf, they're still going to vote for Republicans. They won't work the phone banks and go door-to-door like they used to, but if the GOP can simply refrain from snickering at them like many Democrats do, white evangelicals will still pull the lever for Republicans even if the Republican Party gets out of the social engineering and moralizing business.

In return, the GOP might be able to harness the energy and enthusiasm of the Ron Paul supporters and the libertarians. Who, despite nominating Bob Barr, are generally opposed to everything the social conservatives are for.

The other problem is that for the GOP to be effective, it needs smart, capable leaders. It has, for the past twenty years, run on a sort of faux-populism that implies that smart, educated people are not real Americans, and that government is inherently evil. Is it any wonder that it keeps electing idiots who can't or won't use the power of government wisely? This trend has reached, if not its apotheosis, then at least a current high point in the way Sarah Palin was used in the general election. Sarah Palin may or may not be an dimwit; we can't know, because she was so carefully guarded. Her educational achievements were... limited, to say the least. She got her first passport two years ago. She seemed incapable of delivering a coherent response to a policy question. This doesn't necessarily make her an ignoramus, but it doesn't help. Then she went around the country arguing -- to cheering throngs -- that it you live in a large city, or in the northeast, or on the west coast, or had a graduate degree, or were black, then you weren't a "real American." Is it any wonder, then, that the GOP was crushed among educated voters? As David Brooks pointed out, the GOP's efforts to alienate educated, successful people have been so effective that even investment bankers donate to Democrats at almost twice the rate they contribute to Republicans. Not to mention doctors, lawyers, college professors, engineers, etc.

My advice for the GOP? Ditch the evangelicals. Dump the tactics of hatred, division, and fear. Take the position that social issues are like most other things: something the government should stay out of. Develop a series of cogent, defensible domestic and foreign policies which are consistent with a small-government philosophy. Don't demonize government; advocate for a small, but powerful and effective, government. Create a place for educated people and urbanites. Look, cities with virtual one-party Democratic rule since Roosevelt are being run into the ground by Democrats; people there are thirsty for change, but it can't come from the Republicans so long as the Republicans run on a platform of "we hate educated people" and a fair sprinkling of thinly veiled racism.

If the Republicans absolutely, positively must cling to a social issue, let it be abortion. Get rid of the gay-bashing, the abstinence-only, the creationism, the FCC-As-Your-Mommy, the Congress-Knows-Better-Than-You­r-Spouse-When-To-Pull-The-Plug bullshit, the school prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the other nonsense and take a federalist stance on abortion, which is to say, our position on abortion is simply that the states should decide.

Rocket88:

They won't work the phone banks and go door-to-door like they used to, but if the GOP can simply refrain from snickering at them like many Democrats do, white evangelicals will still pull the lever for Republicans even if the Republican Party gets out of the social engineering and moralizing business.

The bible thumpers have been pretty effective in squeezing the party for what they want. Otherwise they will just stay home on election day.

Rocket88:

In return, the GOP might be able to harness the energy and enthusiasm of the Ron Paul supporters and the libertarians. Who, despite nominating Bob Barr, are generally opposed to everything the social conservatives are for.

Yeah, the annoying Paul cult is enthusiastic but so are the Hare Krishnas. Fortunately there are not many of either group.

The bible thumpers have been pretty effective in squeezing the party for what they want. Otherwise they will just stay home on election day.

Not really. Abortion rights have been chipped at, but not removed. The reversal of Roe isn't any closer now than it has ever been.

Gay marriage was on the rise until the Democrats managed to attract enough conservative voters to the Obama cause to ban it constitutionally.

Bible thumpers have been used by the GOP, which took their votes and paid them lip service.

Really what could the GOP do about abortion other than what they have done - which is appoint more conservative judges to the Supreme Court? Alito and Roberts are not lip service.

The whole Terry Schiavo dog-and-pony show demonstrated how much the Republicans would pander to this group.

Despite MCain kissing Falwell's butt with his speech at Liberty University, the bible thumpers never forgave him for his "agents-of-intolerance" remark from the 2000 GOP primary. They were quite cool to his candidacy until he picked Sarah Plain as VP.

James Dobson, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson will still try to play kingmakers in the GOP. But they have a price. The evangelicals are not going to just vote for The Republicans for nothing in return.

McCain's campaigns in 200 and 2008 are a clear example of the price the evangelicals extract. They may not vote for a Democrat but they can easily decide not to vote. Take a couple million votes away from McCain and how much uglier would this have been? The current Republican majority needs their votes, as evidenced by the pandering McCain had to do in this election.

The Republicans can't jettison this sizable amount of the electorate unless they replace it with significant gains amongst moderates. Which is really the choice before the current party.

Really what could the GOP do about abortion other than what they have done - which is appoint more conservative judges to the Supreme Court? Alito and Roberts are not lip service.

They could outlaw it. They never even tried, even when they controlled House, Senate and White House.

Jettisoning the bible thumpers would make the GOP a small country club party as they were before Nixon's southern strategy. The moderates will remain independent.

I don't think that the feds can just outlaw abortion by passing a law. It would take a constitutional amendment. If Roe v. Wade were overturned in the courts, the decision on abortion would revert back to the states - which was the situation before 1973.

I am fairly sure that it would not take a constitutional amendment. If you define a foetus as a person, the constitution would ban abortion, or at least allow bans on it. So it all rests on the status of the unborn with regards to the constitution. There is no need to define this status in the constitution - it isn't in there now either. A legal clarification of the status of the foetus as a person, approved by congress and ratified by the president would immediately overturn RvW, at least until the Supreme Court reviewed it. It's unclear how the SC could find that the definition of a foetus as a person would be against the constitution. It is also unclear how it could maintain abortion rights as constitutionally protected after that.

If there were no legal impediment then this route would have been tried by some anti-abortion member of Congress. Whether it would pass or whether the leadership supported it would not be all that important to a true believer.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was an attempt.

UUVA is irrelevant since 1) it was signed into law 2) specifically exempted abortion.

Because of the exemption of abortion it was only an attempt. Technically, it is probably the closes thing the US has to a law explicitly allowing abortion.

I'm just saying that they could have left out the exemption for abortion, and it would have been a poison pill for RvW. They didn't do it, because Republicans really, really don't want to overturn RvW.

You are probably right that most Rs really don't want to overturn RvW. But some true believers do and if there was not a legal impediment, they would file a bill to simply ban abortion even if it had no chance of passing. Why beat around the bush with these partial bans and fiddling with unresolvable theological questions about when personhood begins, if the point is just to ban it?

I think the issue is that bans have been passed, but deemed unconstitutional. The only way to get around that is to change the constitution or to change its interpretation. Changing the interpretation is much easier.

I concede that the SC could still declare that a law declaring a foetus a person is unconstitutional. I just don't see how.