I disagree. It is considerably more extreme today than ever. Ideas promoted by Reagan are now seen as radical socialist lefty ideas. Remember that Reagan backed the 1994 Assault Weapon's ban. His speeches back in the day would be practically communist to today's Republicans (Obama makes a point of mentioning this quite a lot).

The only times Republicans won a majority vote in probably the last 15 years were times when being extremist was to their advantage:

- 2002/04 - after 9/11 the extremist neo-con Republican message sold well.
- 2010 where America was facing the largest change to healthcare ever seen and they turned the election into a single issue vote on this which the propaganda machine (Fox et al) did very well in turning it into a 'death panels are coming' etc vote.

So unless the next election is one in which extremist messages sell (who knows, this might be the case) then Republicans are going to struggle electorally until they decide to moderate their extremism.

That, my friend, IS the "will of the people."

Not really.. The will of the people is to have something that actually works...

Background checks are a joke.. And always WILL be a joke until you have a NATIONAL DATABASE, which Democrats are completely opposed to..

Gun Show Loopholes sound good to the uninformed, but guess what "closing" those loopholes would entail??

The same flawed and bogus "background checks"...

The will of the people is that they want something that WORKS...

And like MANY LEO tools, what works is what Democrats fight tooth and nail against..

Michale

Sounds silly to me. The Extremist Party was extremist in 1984, albeit with a genial grandfatherly face, and won a landslide. It was extremist in the 1990s. It was extremist in the "aughts". And it was extremist in 2010, when it won in a landslide. Its extremism can hardly be blamed for its loss in 2012.

We're already seeing an intensifying of the civil war in the GOP (look for news about Karl Rove, this week, to see what I mean).

David's right -- we're about to see GOP tactics used against their own, rather than Democrats. It's going to get a LOT uglier before it gets better, that's my guess.

Michale -

You mean like eliminating all background check loopholes, which polls at 80-95% approval? That sort of thing?

That, my friend, IS the "will of the people."

-CW

It's funny LewDan that the tactics they used for years against Democrats get turned on anyone who isn't a 'purist'.

I wish I could say I see it changing because it would be nice to have a viable alternative to Democrats. However, so far what I see happening is that they're only changing their messaging, not their underlying philosophy.

Unfortunate ...

-David

Like we did in 2010....

I completely agree with that... :D

Michale....

See: Cliff, Fiscal.

So basically the ability of Congress to do anything comes down to the Senate... At least until 2014 when Americans get the chance to review the performance of the House.

Democrats pushed ObamaCare which directly resulted in The Great Democrat Shellacking of 2010...

If Democrats follow the same patter and push Gun Control in the same manner they pushed ObamaCare, then we'll see the Great Democrat Shellacking of 2014.

Speaking of ObamaCare.... The CBO just came out with some revised estimates..

Under ObamaCare, 7 million people will be pushed out of their job-based insurance plans and left with no insurance..

And here I thought that ObamaCare was supposed to HELP people get insurance, not kick them out with no insurance...

Silly me..

Michale

If this were Bush's Republican party I'd agree with you. It was cohesive and extremely regimented. The fly in the ointment is the Tea Party. They aren't particularly wedded to the Republican Party outside of ideological similarities. They've demonstrated, I believe, their willingness, even eagerness, to see the GOP go down in flames if it doesn't hew closely enough to "pure" Tea Party beliefs.

That bodes ill for establishment Republicans pragmatically crossing the isle in attempts to rehabilitate the GOP brand with women and minorities. While it isn't difficult to imagine the 113th being more productive than the 112th, (its hard to imagine any Congress being less productive!) the Tea Party is still in a position to spike everyone's wheels, especially the Republican's, and especially in the Senate.

I suspect the Tea Party, and the vitriol of the last decade, to fire-up the base, may prevent the GOP from reinventing itself in time, before its reduced from national party to regional extremist party status, for a generation or more.