@ brotherkenny4: I agree mostly agree with you. I would like to address your question: “I mean really, does anyone really believe that Dick Cheney believes in God?” I really don’t know about Dick Cheney personally. However, as for him and others of his ilk, some are just putting on political show but others often believe fervently in their own particular notion of God. We have all been told that God made us in his image, but unfortunately many turn that completely backwards. They create their notion of God that reflects their imperfections perfectly, and that is what they believe in.

Huntsman could not have Saved the neo-GNOP for while he would have pulled lots of Indies and some Dems, he would have lost an equal number of lunatic fringe.

Lee Atwater’s “Southern Strategy” doomed the old GOP to being a Party of haters, money-worshipers, backward thinkers, whacks and Confederates.

What the neo-GNOP’s received as the ROI for their expenditure of about $1B on the Election was about 10 points in the Presidential. That is the highwater mark of the neo-GNOP.

One comment is that what Kennedy knew how to do was to talk the civil rights talk. When it came to the walk, that was accomplished by Lyndon Johnson, who came from a poor background in Texas and who, as vice president, was derided by the people in the Kennedy White House as “Rufus Cornpone.”

Sammy Davis, Jr. worked tireless campaigning for Kennedy in 1960 and doing everything that he could to get African American voters to the polling places for the 1960 election, which Kennedy narrowly won. Immediately before the inauguration, Davis experienced the dissing of the 20th century when Kennedy’s assistance told Davis that he was not being invited to any inaugural events because, in that era of segregation, they did not want to offend the sensibilities of Southern Democrats. It was not long afterward that Davis changed his party affiliation to Republican.

Lyndon Johnson was not treated with much more respect than Sammy Davis, Jr., even though Johnson was probably the most experienced and gifted Washington insider of the 20th Century. Johnson had served in both the House and the Senate before becoming Vice President, and he was Senate Majority Leader. When he became President, he decided that his legacy would be the civil rights legislation (for which Kennedy is typically given credit). As the most experienced Capitol Hill politician on the planet at that time in history, Johnson was probably the only person who could have made that legislation pass. And he did so, even though fellow Southern Democrats told him they would leave the party if he succeeded. Perhaps, Johnson, who said he attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College because it was “the poor boys’ school” for kids whose families could not afford the University of Texas, had experienced enough slights from the higher strata of Southern society that he enjoyed throwing a monkey wrench in their system. But, whatever the reason, Johnson decided that he was happy to shove the civil rights legislation down the throats of his fellow Southern Democrats. As a result, they, like Davis, went over to the Republican party.

But more and more of the population is urban. They are not a part of a classic nuclear family, they know (or are)women who have needed abortions, they know (and like) some gay persons from work or elsewhere, they don’t own a gun.

The Republicans have to augment their non-urban base with some new segment of the population, and they have to find a segment that will not be put off by the non-economic Republican viewpoints, which are what hold non-urban voters to Republican candidates.

It sounds kind of hard. But I don’t sell them short, and I don’t doubt that they will find a promising avenue. Historically, it has tended to work that way.

America is changing continually, GOP. Lose the Klan or keep losing elections.