Is the Gop Still a National Party?

      In that talk Romney was having with his paid donors, that the media overheard him in, Romney sounded a bit different.

      The main thing is he made sense. Usually when he's talking to the nonpaying public he makes no sense. For example, he admitted that if something isn't done to appeal to the Hispanic vote, he's doomed.

      He even spoke of a Republican Dream Act. But here's the trouble. He has so categorically attacked the current Dream Act promising it will never happen under his watch.

      He even suggested that immigrants "self-deport." How does he think he can walk back those comments? At this point he hasn't tried.

     It's as if the GOP knows it's shooting itself in the foot as a recent front cover of Mother Jones graphically depicted-quite funny-yet they can't do anything.

     Republican strategist Steve Smith was on Laurene O'Donnell last night and admitted that the GOP can't be a national party if they can't win the Hispanic vote. Smith knows about lost causes-he ran McCain's 2008 campaign and even made the fateful decision to put Sara Palin on the bottom of the ticket, a move he quickly rued.

    The trouble is that the country is changing, both in it's ethnic makeup but also in it's attitude. White people themselves are much less racist than 40 years ago at the start of the GOP's Southern Strategy.

    The GOP strategy used to work as it won 5 of 6 elections between 1968 and 1988 with 4 of these victories blowouts where they won over 40 states and 400 electoral votes. To be sure, even at their peak, the majority of the country wasn't conservative Republican. They always had to depend on the "Reagan Democrats", etc.

     Though it wasn't necessarily clear at the time, since 1992 the GOP has had very little margin for era on the Presidential level. They have starting with Clinton's blowout in 1992 needed everything to fall in place-as they did for Bush in 2000 and 2004. These were squeakers while the Dems have had blowouts in Clinton's two wins and Obama in 2008.

    The real trouble now is that the demographics have changed and the old wedge issues don't have the old cache. Yet, the GOP is married to the old playbook, it can't change. It is meant to get whites to vote out of fear of the minority menace and men to vote for fear the feminist menace.

   As we saw in the phony issue that was used against Hilary Rosen's comments-who doesn't work for Obama anyway-the best the GOP can come up with is to try to divide stay at home wives against women who work. But most women now work. The absurdly catty, inane comments of some groups that attacked Rosen-'Hmph, she had to adopt, Ann Romney has 5 of her own' shows you provincial the thinking is.

   Basically they need to change their attitude about women and immigration. But they can't as to do so would completely collapse their model that they have counted on 44 years. So they won't. They will try to make it up against women by showcasing Ann Romney-rather than discussing the issues women care about. They might try to make up ground with the Hispanic vote by nominating Rubio, though the polls show it would not help with the Hispanic vote. They never get that women don't based on the candidate's wife or that Hispanics need more than a Hispanic candidate that's wrong on all the issues.

   And of course, they will try the lame attempt to frame it as 'what women and Hispanics care about is the economy.' I mean all voters do but that doesn't mean you can attack women's reproductive rights with abandon and attack immigrants in the visceral terms that Romney has and this won't be a problem. The 70-14 margin they trail with Hispanics and double digit deficit with women shows the GOP can't trick anyone into voting for them. They can only trick themselves.