You can't be serious. Homosexual marriage and pot legalization are the two most important issues facing the under 40 set? Now who is being condescending? Its like the D's rock solid belief that abortion rights is the primary focus of female voters. Insulting.

Great comment on NBC tonight that the GOP has embraced the people getting ready to leave the stage and turned their backs on the people getting ready to take the stage.

Yes. But as someone said of modern physics, it wasn't accepted because the classicists revised their views, it became the standard model when the classicists died off and the quantum mechanics were in charge. The GOP has not only taken many extreme positions that are hard to walk back from, but they have generally lashed themselves to the mast with apocalyptic rhetoric justifying those positions as essential to society's very survival. In other words, they have really cemented themselves in a bad spot.

The GOP position in Oregon shows why its a bad idea to say that God supports (surprise!) exactly the positions that your platform takes and that God hates exactly the people that your party faithful all hate. Makes it reaaalllly tough to revise those positions even a little, much less ask some of those people not to see you as hateful and to vote for you.

As someone who grew up in a Republican household that reliably voted for republicans who were to the left of all GOPsters today and many Dems, I would welcome a healthy GOP in Oregon. I'm not holding my breath. The dumbing down of society and the evil synergy of Citizen's United and the perfection in Rovian/Norquistian fratricide means that the GOP may not even be able to return to sanity successfully. It may just have to disappear entirely so that a decent alternative can arise, just as the GOP was born into the void created by the Whigs failure.

You can't be serious.

Those are just examples. Just as your shrill screeching is an example of what's wrong with the Republican Party. You're marginalizing yourself. That crow you're eating will become a regular diet if you don't wake up.

As a Democrat, I hope they continue with their 1950's approach to the world. They will become smaller and less relevant every day. And the lady from Lake Oswego helps showcase it...Thank you Pom Mom :)

Republicans far beyond Oregon need to work on their youthful appeal. But hey, my parents think the GOP is cool.

Tru Dat

After the foreign policy debate one headline said that the winner was George W. Bush. What I think tonight cemented was closer to reality: George really did take the Republicans over a cliff.
They had everything going for them to take back the White House, and they couldn't pull it off. The old theory that Obama had a messiah halo over him is long gone, and yet the Republicans still couldn't win.
After parading out a lineup of mediocre clowns during the primaries - with the exception of Ron Paul - they settled for someone they weren't thrilled about themselves.
Then they turned to their greatest strength: Trying to talk and spin their way into an alternate reality where they're in charge because they are what America needs.
But even against this incredible financial record they couldn't get it done.
This leaves their brain trust of Rush, Sarah Palin, and Karl Rove questioning themselves but still not getting it: America is just not that into you.

But Jack as we age and develop a sense of personal responsibility we become Republicans. Duh! :-)

Not sure softening on social issues is going to work as the base seems committed to the stodgy path on those. They might be able to flip on immigration and pull more Latino votes though. That would at least help nationally.

Or Ralph "Humping for Corporate Accounts" Reed, the Eddie Haskell of political suck ups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/us/politics/after-loss-gop-faces-struggle-over-partys-direction.html

the base seems committed

It's clearly time to change the base. At least, if they want to get anywhere in Oregon or nationally.

Agree that.

If I was going to give advice to the Rs to get traction, I think I'd say to just give up on the issues like Gay Marriage and Abortions - Minds aren't going to change. The more they fight the Ds on this stuff, the less time to focus on stuff actually crucial to our future

However, what the Ds have managed to do is use these issues to divert focus away from things like:
- Lousy schools
- Public employee costs skyrocketing
- Mentally ill roaming the streets
- Potholes
- Keeping the Goldschmidt party alive
- Using tax money to subsidize banks
- Creating a fair tax structure

I don't know how you do it (especially since most people attention span is about the 140-character limit of a Tweet), but Rs could change minds on these issues. How you re-frame this argument instead of re-drawing the same battlelines is going to take some time.

There is only one brain in the Oregon Republican Party, and they all have to take turns with it.

Last night was not Allen Alley's turn with the brain.

There is more than one brain in the Oregon Republican Party and no one is the state legislature does near the brilliant work than Dennis Richardson does.

"There is only one brain in the Oregon Republican Party"

So besides Neil G, can you give me the long list of brains in the Democrat party?

I think assuming any politician has a lot of brains is not a real strong position.

Nationally, if the Republicans don't run a Hispanic in four years, they're morons.

(Oregon) Republicans need more youthful appeal. Yeah, that's the ticket: Youthiness.
But, Jack, having an olde idea and then remaking it anew means it is elementally not the olde idea any more, foreclosed and gone, dust, poof, (like the idea the Earth is flat: delusion), extinct except in reverie. The only other way olde idea gets a youthiness remake is in disguise, like wrinkle creams, posing imagery thin as a veneer, a deceit overlaying core conditions which is pretty much the way they Repubs try to try to ... but how's that working for them.
Honesty works most reliably: Drop the olde idea; toast; ghost. Get a new idea core condition. Then be like new people and be liked as youthiness.

See, youth(ful) DOES NOT NEED Republicanism idea any more in its world.

It's off the table. (It's basically this, in essence: Low-risk penurious-return longterm investment of assets/estate/proprietorship reputation, and thus then regular income to live off the interest. Which is monarchical idea, of landed estate.) Monarchy was debunked and outmoded by constitutional revolution, the idea that a country is constituted by many many humans of massive social capacity and consumption who are NOT "of landed estate," that is: not owning the land, merely inhabiting the land.

Which is where today's (modern) youth finds itself being, facing a choice between two types of Democratic leftiness: table center and table edge.
Central (or actuarially 'normalized'?) Democratic is sort of the Labor Union idea, bland and gray and sufficient. Edgy Democratic is sort of the Creative Artiste idea, (governance for) complete life-needs sufficiency in order to inhabit, to occupy the country made from each according to individual ability.

Not working and instead living off of investments interest can not be made (more) for youth. Youthiness lives in matching opportune moments with each one's abilities.

And the current shared republican brain is the size of a walnut! Not just in OR but nationally.
I truly hope the evil Karl Rove is gone, but like a zombie he seems to rise from the dead again and again.
This county needs a "loyal opposition" for democracy to function well. But the current GOP, controlled by a group of old, white, racist, war mongering males is not working for the good of my country and I resent their out-dated failed policies.