You write:
Republicans try to portray President Obama as an old-time big spending liberal, he just isn’t. He, like Clinton, is at heart a pragmatist.

Not too hard to "try" and portray the Prez as a big spending liberal.

He is.

Some truths are self evident, and to steal a line, I know Bill Clinton, and you, Mr. President, t'aint no Bill Clinton.

The Geezer has spaketh

"Become a national party again?"

The Republican Party controls a majority of state legislatures, a majority of Governorships, a majority in the US House, and is poised to win the US Senate.

Republicans struggle on the west coast and the northeast, other than that we are America's majority party.

Which is part of the problem for Washington State Republicans. Our national message doesn't sell here, but if you were running the GOP would you change a message that is winning in most of America?

" but if you were running the GOP would you change a message that is winning in most of America?"

If my loyalty was to the GOP and I viewed politics as a short-term game to be won at all costs, even if it was bad for the US, perhaps not. If my primary goal was to solve the long-term problems of US and ensure the long term supremacy of my party in the process then absolutely yes. Populism and propagating ignorance are often very effective in the short term but hopefully not in the long term.

b

"Other than that." That's like "Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

The GOP controls the states that pretty well top all the lists in things nobody wants to be on the top of: poverty, education, illegitimate births, and on and on.

Chris, tell ya what. If the Red States stop accepting net tax transfers from the Blue States, then we'll talk. If the Red States start showing that their way of doing things turns them into the rich states (and don't count oil dropping oozing out of the ground), then we'll talk.

If the Red States can stop bribing foreign companies to locate there with massive tax subsidies, then we'll talk.

The Red States are slowing sinking into a Third World morass, kept afloat only by the labor of those in the Blue States.

I am more confident each day that Barack Obama will be reelected in November. As days go forward and this country continues to become more diverse, the Republican Party will continue to marginalize itself unless it accepts change. We cannot go back to the days when only whites - mostly males - ran the show.

Why should the Republican Party change? They think they are winning. And outside Seattle and cities like Seattle, they are winning.

When I last checked the Iowa Electronic Market gives our Democratic President a 70% chance of being reelected. That is not winning in my books or are the Republicans happy to cede control of the White House if they can control the other two branches of government?

Bill Clinton reinvented the Democratic Party as a center-left institution in reaction to the Reagan years. It worked. Barack Obama smashed Clinton's Democratic Party, the party that offered that "The era of big government is over," to pieces four years ago. Obama's Democrats are the social democrats of Europe. A radicalized Democratic party to some extent breeds a reactive radicalization of the Republican party. After all, as Goldwater said, "..." ...well, we all know the quote of moderation vis-a-vis extremism.

One example of the radical turn of the Democrats, as mentioned by the author, is the strange notion that birth control is a civil right. Pregnancy is not a disease, and it is only rarely a medical emergency, so it's hard to understand why a package of birth control pills, available for ten bucks (about the cost of a large bottle of ibuprofen) should be paid for as a right by the taxpayers. If that's the case, then maybe men should demand that the cost of dinner and Viagra be picked up by the taxpayers as well. It would be, literally, the "free love" promised by the counter-culture of the 1960s.

"And that brings us back to the Republican Party. Who will bring them back to the center? How can they demonstrate that theirs’ is a party of the future and of inclusion?"

The premises here are incorrect. The writer assumes that some single charismatic figure can lead the Republican sheep back into the mainstream pasture. But elected Republican leaders who have even hinted circumspectly at the possibility of centrist accommodation have been unceremoniously thrown out of office, usually via a primary election challenge from the far right. You can't lead people where they don't want to go. And who imagines that the modern-day GOP wants to be "a party of the future and of inclusion"? This is precisely what the Republican core does not want to be.

These are difficult times, and not likely to get much better soon. Environmental degradation exists on every front, resources are running out, and the stresses of overpopulation and poverty express themselves everywhere as anger and fanaticism. But a large, mostly older segment of the American population doesn't want to see any of these things -- they disturb the opulent consumerist vision of the good life and suggest a need for restraint and perhaps even sacrifice. Right-wingers love to talk about their glorious patriotism, but in reality they prefer existences of private self-indulgence where the unseemly suffering of their fellow citizens is kept hidden out of sight.

The Republican Party caters to this mind-set. It is the party of denial, where with a quick flip of the electoral switch it's back to the 50s again -- big tail fins on cars, gas at 30 cents a gallon, nothing but smiling white faces pushing shopping carts through the supermarket. Nobody really likes Romney, but his strong suit is that he looks like he just stepped off the set of "Leave it to Beaver."

It's not much, but it may be enough to win one last election, if all the old white folks show up en masse, the kids stone out and enough people of color are turned away from the voting booth. And if, of course, you steadfastly avoid discussing the messy and inconvenient policy details. It is surely a cynical strategy, and one that offers little prospect of long-term electoral viability, but it is calculated and deliberate. The content may be irrational, but the strategy is not. The Republican Party is positioned exactly where it wants to be.

One effective and pragmatic Republican President could move them back to the center by working with both parties in Congress on sensible conservative solutions to our national problems. In doing so he or she would likely attract many more moderates to the party and even though the right wing might not like it, they would probably not be so suicidal as to oppose the renomination of a popular president. Ironically Mitt Romney has the background to be just that president if given a chance or at least that is what many radical Republicans fear.

Mr. Vance has a point. This piece should have focused more on the collapse of the Republican Party in Washington State, which is down to its last two rising stars in Reagan Dunn and Rob McKenna. It's likely that both will lose their races for statewide office in November, while it's a lock that Michael Baumgartner will stunt his career growth with an embarassingly large loss to Cantwell. Lacking candidates of statewide stature, the Rs face a gloomy future here in the other Washington, but they're not that bad off nationally.

It looks better on the map to win Wyoming than Massachusetts, but the party that wins Massachusetts actually has the majority.

If you think people instead of square miles, the Republican party is in rapid decay. Not just locally, but nationally.

And I don't think that even Chris Vance is proud to be a member of the party of anti-science.

At the present moment, the two parties are mostly evenly matched. Republicans will probably retain control of the House next year, and they still have realistic chances at the Senate and White House. The situation is still unlike that of, say, the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression, during which the only chance Democrats had to compete nationally was when if the Republicans were divided (as in 1912) or made themselves unpopular through overreach (as in 1890).

But Republicans leaders must be nervous when they think about the long-term demographic changes that are occurring. Unless the GOP makes some serious headway into minority communities and large cities, then in a decade's time, they will indeed become a regional party. That will require purging the unseemly elements from the party. They did it in the 1950s by purging the antisemites; today I think they can get rid of the nativists if they realize that they have to.

Chris Vance seems to be in denial like most White Republican males with comments like this... "Why should the Republican Party change? They think they are winning. And outside Seattle and cities like Seattle, they are winning."

With a party this is anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-health care, anti-senior citizen, anti-student, it's on a matter of time before the state control that Vance speaks of collapses. In many races, the Republican candidates are able to outspend their Democratic opponents by 7-to-1 or more and win. But this even more clearly illustrates the problem that Vance refuses to acknowledge.

Namely, the Republican party is dying, supported only by propaganda, expensive corporate money and bogus Voter ID laws that will suppress the vote in their favor... temporarily.

The voter i.d. laws do look like the desperate act of a party that is apparently giving up on winning fairly.