Oh, and to add to my initial statement:
Yep…nothing to see here…move along.
The repubs have distilled down to the 20 % that they really are. They have to enlarge their base. They would love to attract people a little more moderate but Limbaugh, Hannity and others are sending the opposite message. Any attempts to grow the base have to fight with the radical right wingers that get all the press. It will not work. They have to sabotage the dems and hope for a disaster. Limbaugh already gets that.
I was trying to speak from the center. 
The GOP needs to grow a pair and publicly disavow Rush Limbaugh; let their idiot base form another party and let the GOP possibly gain a little respect.
So what? Last stats I remember, Americans are 70% pro choice. Has that changed?
The thing about Limbaugh and Hannity and others of their ilk is that their business model isn’t at all about playing nice with others. Their whole schtick is predicated upon being the “angry white man.” If the GOP sheds a few million voters because blowhards like them can’t shut up and insist on foisting an outdated vision on the party, well that’s just the price of doing business.
They couldn’t care less about what happens to the Republican Party as long as they manage to keep collecting a huge paycheck.
You saw who had to apologize to whom when Steele gave Limbaugh the brushoff. While I don’t like anything about Steele, it’s also true that he’s in an unenviable position as the head of a party that is currently rudderless, and Steele himself doesn’t have much support.
I pretty much agree with what others have said. Steele isn’t going to get very far is the plan is moderates are welcome to vote for conservatives.
Problem with that is, in a three-party system – i.e., a GOP of moderates, a large third party of movement conservatives, and the Democratic Party as now constituted – the Dems would always win, their opposition being split into two parties, neither of which could claim a majority outside a few red-county enclaves.
There may be a party for liberals in the U.S., but whichever one of those tiny parties you may choose has not won a seat in Washington, (or the vast majority of state offices), in your lifetime.
I love watching those on the extreme Right making so many harsh claims against the center party while trying to call them “liberals.”
I think that there is a place for moderate Republicans. The Democrats definitely need honest criticism to keep them from running amok. Of course, as long as the core GOP only practices homosexuality in public restrooms while voting to discriminate against homosexuals, champions Creationism and prayer in schools, favors the hypocrisy of running up horrendous debts to finance pointless and ill-conceived wars while moaning that actual Keynesian economics is a horrible thing, and grovels at the foot of a drug addicted entertainer, (while muttering the mantra the drugs are bad), there is certainly a lot less room for moderates there.
Not quite, a new Moderate Party could once again start in the North. It would start winning seats and slowly grow in power and then they would start picking up many Governorships. Eventually the Republican party would lose the Libertarians, Neo-Cons and of course the Fiscal Conservatives and the remaining Neo-Cons would struggle along for a decade or two in a few states in the deep South and some of the other extremely Red states. The Dems would dominate for a long time but not forever. Maybe as little as 20 years total. A moderate party would probably cut the Dems quite a bit in the states. Once the party structure is in place, in-roads into the Senate and Congress will happen.
This is all up to the Republicans though. They could move back to the center and kill any chances or they can keep up the current rhetoric and keep telling moderates that we are liberals and then a new party could be birthed.
Actually, there is a lot of conservatism among many Democrat voters. A genuine Moderate party might actually take off and endanger us with a single party system. 
Oh, there are some liberals in office in D.C. What is sadly lacking are progressives, defined as something more or less equivalent to “social democrats” in Europe, i.e., something well to the left of “liberal” and well to the right of “socialist,” as discussed in this thread. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Senator Bernie Sanders (despite the latter being a self-ID’d socialist, he isn’t, really) are the only ones that come to mind.
Still not evidence. The best the article can say is that it helped get out social conservatives to vote. It doesn’t state anywhere that it was enough to push a state for Bush that would have otherwise gone to Kerry. It contains a lot of speculation but no facts to back it up. But here’s a quote from that same article:
In any case, Ohio went to Bush in 2000 without the help of an anti-same sex marriage ballot. Only three states actually switched between red and blue in 2000 and 2004, and none of those three states had same-sex marriage up for a vote. Only 11 states out of 50 had a same sex marriage ballot initiative in 2004, and all 11 of those states voted for the same party they did in 2000, two of them for Democrats.
The article and the quote you selected still says Bush would have won Ohio by 36,000 votes even if he didn’t increase his share of the Ohio black vote from 9 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2004. It also makes no mention of same-sex marriage issue or its appeal to black voters. It suggests that the GOP spent more money on commercials targeting blacks and Hispanics.
There were much, much bigger reasons for Bush’s reelection in 2004 than gay marriage. The first being the war.
Yes, but they have very little support in this country.
“Understand that when you come into someone’s house, you’re not looking to change it. You come in because that’s the place you want to be.”
That sounds like code for a closeted gay Republican orgy to me.
The problem with the Republicans asking moderates to vote for them is why can’t they just join the Democrats who talk a liberal game but are governing like moderates? Liberals like me are less than happy, but we will go along with it because it is better to be on the inside with the moderates and having a liberal (Obama) nominally in charge, but the decisions are still going to go straight down the middle. Conservatives don’t let the moderates run things, they marginalize them and will continue to tell them to shut up and agree with conservative priorities. Why would any “moderate” want to do that rather than be put in a position of real responsibility as a Democrat. I loathe Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter’s politics, but I’m glad they caucus with us, and I’ll get over the positions of honor they’ve be given provided that government is run in an overall sane manner.
Still more than socialists – even such moderate socialists as the Democratic Socialists of America – have, though. Check out the Working Families Party and the Vermont Progressive Party.
Sounds to me like code for, “The movement conservatives already did exactly that to the GOP and I’m calling no backsies!”
Little support, not no support. Nor are they growing in number to speak of.
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