I think the point that the Democratic party is controlled by net beneficiaries of the entitlement state is off. The fact is that Republican presidential candidates now lose every high income state in the country. CT is the highest per capita income state in the country. MA is in the top 5. NJ, NY, VA, MD. Any state with a high percentage of $200k+ earners goes blue. Look at the median per capita income of every single red state yesterday - these are low-income states...in the bottom 50%. Asians and Jews vote overwhelmingly democrat - these two groups have higher median incomes than whites. How can Republicans basically concede every high income state in the country and expect to win with a message of low taxes? It simply makes no sense. Republican governors run many blue states - NYC has had a Republican or Independent mayor for 20 straight years. MA had Romney and Bill Weld. NY had Pataki. NJ has Christie. Pete Wilson and Arnold in CA. Reagan DID come from CA. But Republicans cannot win these states in national elections. Republicans need to abandon the south and focus on trying to win in CA and NY - and this will straighten out all the social issue baggage.
From 1960 to 1988 - California voted for the Democratic candidate only once - in 1964 for LBJ. The problem was not Romney - he was a fine candidate, very intelligent, commanding, a gentleman. Any other Republican candidate would have been destroyed. But he had to shift so hard to the right to win the primaries - there was no way he could recover without seeming opportunistic.
And the dogma of tax cuts - how can a party be anxious about deficits with a plan to cut tax rates 20% across the board? How can a party complain that 47% of people do not pay federal income tax, yet want to cut middle class taxes further...wouldn't this result in even less people paying federal income tax? The positions just do not make sense. The only way to increase the number of people that pay federal income tax is to raise taxes on the bottom 50% - unless the Republican party wants to do this, why incessantly complain about this. You can't it have both ways.
