"How do you explain the 2010 Midterms?"

That is pretty easy to explain but perhaps you should read my other post in this thread about it just being a matter of numbers. As I said, you will continue to be able to elect hardcore right wingnuts in parts of the country where there are pockets of people that support such nonsense. Electing presidential candidates is going to be a rather major struggle for the Republicans going forward.

"Right now I see the Takers outnumber the Makers. The Producers now answer to Dependents."

Were those on the signs you held up at the last Tea Party rally?

And of course "Whiskey for the leprechauns!" and "The liver is evil and must be punished!"

You need some better slogans but I do realize those two you are hanging on to appeal to some folks.

"If you think the Republican's will be re-invented as Republican light you are wrong. They tried that twice now and both times it did not work."

Ok, Pat, I've explained this before but this last election just spray painted it in day-glo orange across the country...you see, the center keeps moving to the left as the years go by. What this means is if you went back to the 1950s what would have been thought of as "the political middle ground" has now shifted way over to the left. So, Republicans have over the course of time moved toward being more liberal in keeping with how our society has advanced. So they already are "Republican light" right now.

There is no shift back to the conservative right. Really, there just isn't. Don't just look at the fact that Obama won, look at the where America now stands on equal rights for gay couples. Gay marriage proposals are passing around our nation because overwhelmingly we believe in equal rights in this country. Look at the proposals in various forms that passed around the nation legalizing marijuana. We are moving forward in this country...not back. The Republicans are coming along kicking and screaming but they are coming.

Your other issue is the people at the top of the Republican Party don't care about gays being able to marry or people smoking a joint or immigration or Christian values or any of that.

They used this stuff to work people into a frenzy to try and get you angry and scared enough to turn out to vote and to listen to them...but they aren't stupid and guess what they found out...there are not enough nut jobs on the right that care about all that nonsense to win a National election.

They threw ridiculous amounts of money at getting every angry and scared shitless white guy to polls they could and came up way short.

You know what they are saying behind closed doors "There just are not enough angry and scared shitless white guys to win a presidential election anymore!"

Karl Rove fucked them. He made them think a strategy to piss off and scare every freak in the right wing nut job closet into turning up at the polls could still win one of these things.

But you know what Karl did? He left them exposed and he showed America a lot of really ugly stuff in the Republican closet and America turned its back.

"The Democrats brought out the base ignoring the independents and the Republicans did not. It's that simple"

Sorry, Pat, but the issue is not the "independent" vote it is that the Republicans are drawing from an ever shrinking pool of voters. The Republicans do not have a strategy to expand their base and the stuff they are promoting that they stand for the majority of Americans do not agree with.

Combine this with the growing number of Hispanic voters and what you have is a recipe for the death of the Republican Party as a player on the national scale. Throw in that the Millennial Generation has grown up in a far more liberal country than the one your current crop of Republican politicians grew up in and you have an issue of epic proportions for the Republican Party.

Leading right into this:

"Marco Rubio 2016"

You do understand at this point why he is the Republican "Hail Mary" candidate don't you? They need to redefine themselves on immigration and present a candidate they hope appeals to Hispanic voters...because without them the Republicans are finished.

So, expect the Republican Party to start promoting themselves as a "Multi-cultural party, ese!" and you know, make Cinco de Mayo a national holiday and promote the idea that America must become a nation of two languages.

It will be interesting to watch their change of directions and see who actually buys into this but hey, you know just when you thought it could not get any weirder.