Three weeks after the Nov. 6 general election Republicans still have not recovered from the shock of their crushing defeat.
The GOP, of course, lost the presidential race between President Barack Obama and Former Gov. Mitt Romney.
Romney was speechless at his loss and Newt Gingrich admitted he was "dumfounded."
For the past three weeks Republican operatives, Fox News, so-called conservative think-tanks and self-deluding pundits have been trying to cite the huge voter turnouts of blacks and latinos, all the while "recognizing" that women voters are not all dumb blondes.
These same Republicans (or Republican-leaning crowd) are making a big deal that white men aren't with the Democrats any more. However, as Chris Cillizza and Jon Cohen pointed out in their Nov. 8 piece in the Washington Post, white men voting for Democratic presidential nominees has been fairly constant in every election since 1972.
President Obama collected 39 percent of white men this past election. George McGovern received 32 percent of white men's vote and Jimmy Carter had 47 percent in 1976. President Obama"s 39 percent matched Bill Clinton's 39 percent in 1992.
House Speaker John Boehner managed to cling to a narrow Republican majority in that chamber and was stunned into sobriety until he remembered that he has no control over (much less influence with) much of his Republican caucus.
Republican remedies to their election problem range from "loosening ties with Fox News" to courting Latinos and women (black people seem to be a lost cause to the GOP white men's club).
Romney even said President Obama had won by lavishing generous "gifts" upon certain groups, including young voters, African-Americans and Latinos.
Just as easily, I assert that Romney lost by lavishing generous "gifts" upon his only true constituency--the top 1 percent of America's rich folk.
Unfortunately, none of those remedies have a chance of saving the Republican Party because the root cause of their problem is that the GOP is made up of an unsustainable coalition.
The several factions that make up the party have no common ground. In fact, if one of the factions were to become dominant all the other factions would be thrown under the bus--to use a clichà © currently in vogue among Washington's chattering pundits.
Neocons
Neocons are those Wall Street types who are religiously dedicated to the Milton Friedman economic model of a mythical Free Market. (The merits of that junk economic theory can be debated elsewhere). This faction also is the most jingoistic crowd wanting to go to war at every turn in the road.
Christian Fundamentalists
Stemming from the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy (and a handful of the church's congregation) and the hundred-year old Pentecostal fundamentalist movement, this faction's main battle cry is "Pro Life," which means opposing abortion of fetuses and in some cases opposing any type of contraception before, during or after a woman has sexual intercourse.
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