Do you think if Romney loses the Republican party will rethink catering to the "base" of the party?

2012 is the Republicans last chance in a lot of ways because the voting demographics are shifting. The “northern Republicans” you mention have generally left to be independent; that description as socially liberal disappeared twelve years ago, and died with the Tea Party movement.

Republican refusal to broaden their tent will be their ending. Didn’t see more than a couple of highlighted darker faces at the convention, did you?

@zenvelo Interestingly, religiously based views on social issue align pretty well with the “darker” faces you noted as missing from the crowd. But, since we have an electoral college, even if the Republicans wooed black people over in bigger numbers, that doesn’t help much, because the southern states already generally go for the Republican candidate. Hispanics probably could become part of a larger swing vote potentially I guess. I think Catholics in general are a big part of the swing vote, and Hispanics would just ad to the number being for the most part Catholic. I have no idea how other minorities vote?

I doubt it. They didn’t get the hint in 2008, and the Tea Party hijacked them to the Right in 2010.

I see the future of the republicans, as a party, as very grim. They are moving ever-rightward, catering to the radical right, and will continue to do so. They will make themselves increasingly appealing to a very small group of noisy voters, but they will make themselves increasing irrelevant to the mass of conservative, but not radically so, citizens.

That means that the conservatives will either go to the democratic party, which will move rightwards a little to accommodate the conservatives, or they will create some other new more centrist group.

In any event, as @JLeslie said, the republican party as we see it today

1) is incapable of self-reflection
2) wouldn’t do it if it could
3) is ultimately doomed

I don’t think the results of this election alone will be enough to determine that. It will depend on Obama’s approval, the 2014 congressional elections, and congressional control & approval going into 2016.

Lower approval for Obama, more red seats in congress, and higher approval of red seats going into 2016 all lend strength to putting up an ideal candidate. Higher approval for Obama, more blue seats in congress, and higher approval of blue seats going into 2016 means they either put up a moderate candidate (their current strategy) or wait for the Dems to self destruct. The one thing they have going for them regardless is it should be easier for them to run against an incumbent party than an incumbent president in 2016.

Either way it’s a numbers game and, while shouting loudest draws attention, you don’t get votes through alienation.

Are you kidding me? Mittens was arguably the most center politician in the group… if he loses they’re going to see it as an indictment of catering to the middle of the electorate, and probably veer even further right. Look at how conservative the others in the party are. Bachmann is talking about having investigations into the patriotism of congressmen, Perry is advocating the secession of Texas, Paul Ryan is arguing for the privatization of pretty much the entirety of the Federal government, etc, etc.

Surprisingly enough, Mittens is the sane one.

No, if he loses they’ll probably blame it on his being Mormon, or being too rich, or being too liberal to “excite the base”, etc.

I dunno. It’s only the Presidency. They still have a hammerlock on Congress. So they must figure they are doing something right, and that if they are even more mean at the local level, they will attract more votes.

I think they could just as easily figure the problem was that Romney wasn’t a real conservative. If they got a real conservative Presidential candidate, then they’d do all right. And they could be right, given a perfect storm.

Not very likely.

I don’t believe that the ‘hardcore’ conservative voter base are enough by themselves to guarentee the Republicans victories on a national level. The Republicans need to cater to not only moderate voters to win, but in the near future they will need to cater to an ever growing liberal sector of Americans too. If the Republicans don’t find a way to do these things the party will die out sometime before this century ends.

@Paradox25 From your mouth to God’s ears.