Energized GOP trying to avoid intraparty feud
I think it's a mistake for the GOP, long term, to go the route the likes of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and our very own Sen. Jim DeMint are urging the party to take. It may pay dividends in 2010. I'm not sure. But the fundamental demographic changes remain daunting: We are speeding towards being a minority-majority nation, and if the GOP successfully kicks out the folks who agree with it a lot -- and that includes a ton of black and Hispanic people -- but are turned off by its rhetoric and far right wing, they will cut off their own legs on the national level. Remember this: Had Ronald Reagan run in 2008 and won the same percentage of white and black and Hispanics voters he did in the 1980s, he would have lost in a landslide in the same way he won in a landslide in '84. The country has changed that much. Forward-thinking politicians understand.
