Oh, everyone and their uncle inside the GOP and outside deluged me the first couple days afterwards with advice and suggestions about how we'd absolutely win if we moved on some stance, invariably and doubtless coincidentally to match their own priorities. "We need to be more X" is now a phrase that makes me want to scream unless X is 'aggressive' or 'unified'.



On some things sure, we can probably work out a tax plan and spending reduction for instance. There's no 'middle ground' on abortion, there's some on guns, there is hopefully some on environmentalism, etc.



Hard to say, most of the elected officials I know are intelligent and very reasonable, Dem or Republican, so are the various party officials. Compromise is possible but there's a big trust gap. You might not think it's merited - you may even be right - but we're not not working with Obama to screw him so much as we don't trust him to honor his word.



On that I agree, that's why I'm not sure the GOP made any core mistake this time around just had the weaker hand on Nov 6th. You're right earlier that Obama won by more than the skin of his teeth, but it wasn't a big win anymore than Bush 2004 and I don't want to re-engineer everything around it.