Yes, and they will. The question is do they steer in that direction sooner and become relevant again within this decade, or do they go wholesale crazy (and as a Republican I’m talking the national party leadership, not individuals like myself who are not mentally insane) in some deluded belief that Americans need more crazily conservative candidates and that is why Romney lost. If they do that, and it isn’t only possible but perhaps more likely than not, then they’ll enter a “long wilderness” of perhaps a generation or more. People remember particularly crazy things, like multiple Republicans running for office saying that women can’t conceive babies from “legitimate rape.” That hurts the national brand, and you lose voters forever that way. If you stay that offensive for that long, you alienate too many voters to be viable.
We have a “naturally two party system” in that our election setup trends towards two parties. But there is nothing that would prevent long periods of one party rule, and it has happened in the past when other political parties have imploded.
Romney lost for a several reasons: bad campaign strategy, bad campaign management (they aren’t the same thing), a candidate with little likability, no effective strategy for dealing with that poor likability, divergent and specious positions on important polarizing issues, and that’s before you even get to the fact it was a two man race and the other guy had some part to play in Romney’s defeat. Without Obama uttering a word Romney and his campaign did a lot of things wrong.
His poorly defined and variable position on the issues is the one thing that was probably mostly out of his control. Romney is a long time Massachusetts resident and former Massachusetts Governor who at one point was pro-choice. I don’t think he’s a closet liberal, but given his life history and his choice of where to live and conduct his life highly suggests he was not genuinely as conservative as the Tea Party. This reality forced him to try and speak out of both sides of his mouth in the primary, and then do the same thing in the general. Aside from all his other problems, it left Romney failing in a key area: presenting a clear and clearly understood alternative to the existing President.
Compare his campaign to President Bush’s two campaigns. Bush did much to reach out to the Latino community (I know he’s an unpopular figure here, but he cleaned up with Latinos both in the Presidential election and gubernatorial elections), and really he laid the groundwork for a long term situation where the GOP might hope to split the Latino vote with the Democrats in national elections. In 2008 and 2012 the Republicans adopted extreme anti-immigration Know-Nothing style rhetoric that essentially reversed all of that.
There are many things the GOP can do to become more relevant nationally, and the Hispanic issue is a relatively easy one. The Hispanics are not monolithic like blacks and are not so concentrated in urban centers and are not a unified community. Republican messages are not based on giving communities things but instead giving individuals things. State-level Republican candidates in Florida and Texas have found winning formulas for Hispanic voters, as did George W. Bush. Other issues like abortion should be relegated to what it once was for the GOP, a side issue on which it was willing to compromise. In 1990 there were many pro-choice Republicans, now not only does that essentially make you unelectable in a Republican primary many Republican politicians have gone further right than where the country was in 1990, and further right than the GOP was in 1990 with advocating removing exceptions for rape and health of the mother and other policies that are simply unacceptable. Not only unacceptable to women but unacceptable to many men as well. The Republican party has allowed a collection of extremists to preempt the rest of the party and that now means it has a collection of deeply unpopular policy positions in a number of areas.
The GOP needs to focus on aspects of its policy positions that have greater appeal. For example over 70% of Americans favor reducing government spending, that makes it an unequivocal “winner” of a position. A large majority of Americans also support tax reform, and at one time the GOP supported legitimate tax reform as well. But that tax reform can’t be “broadening the base” (which I believe to be necessary) while leaving extremely favorable tax breaks in place for the rich. Many Americans will accept they must pay higher taxes, but not while billionaires can pay 15% tax on billion-dollar a year incomes from carried interest as hedge fund managers (treating compensation as capital gains), or even 15% tax on hundreds of millions of dollars of dividend or capital appreciation. That’s just no acceptable to people making $60,000 a year. The GOP needs to recognize that and move on from those positions.