I used to believe in the religion of Global Warming until I started reading Redstate. Slowly my position changed.

What joltingly became obvious was that Global Warming was a religion. I mean that people on the left believed it on faith and defended it with purely emotional reasoning.

When reasonable doubt was used to question the faith and using science to come up with alternative ideas, it was shouted down by attacking the scientist.

“He works for the oil companies”

“He is a propaganist”

etc.

But what about the ideas?

I found on the internet the doubters could justify their positions much better than the believers. They actually formed arguments while the believers threw bombs.

I’ve been fascinated by Intrade over the past few years and its record. Having been trained in Stats and making a living using stats, I found Nate Silver compelling.

Until yesterday, I didn’t know if he was right or wrong but he was logically defending his methology. It made sense.

On the right, he was attacked, not his ideas or methods. Pure emotion. Just like Global Warming believers.

There was one amazing post by Dan on Redstate explaining why Silver could be wrong. It made sense and was supported with fact and logic. I loved it. But it was about the only reasoned argument I saw against Silver.

Everything else was about feel.

“I feel iike the Obama ground gain will be worse than 2008. I have no facts (and the facts out their contradict me) but I’m predicting a Romney landslide. And Silver is a liberal who used to post on KOS and he uses a socialist calculator”

Fact is that the elcotrate of the country is changing and the Republican party has to either abandon it’s conservative values or reach out to the hispanics, women and blacks who are basically conservative but completely turned off by the Republican party.

Saying today that Obama voters are all takers who want handouts from the government is highly insulting to the hard working ambitious (and mostly conservative) Latino voters. It’s purely emotional and not even remotely true.

There are real, honest reasons the Republican party is not appealing to these voters and I’ve observed that when it is openly discussed, the response from white conservatives is emotional and defensive. And shouted down emotionally.

Until that emotion is let go, the problem won’t be solved.

I am ready to start hearing some answers around here. I don’t have them outside of let’s nominate Rubio in 4 yrs and at least have an EFFING chance. I feel like we are already past the point of no return, we should have known that a divided electorate wouldn’t last forever. The Democrats have formed what appears to be a permanent majority. I suppose things could go so badly in the next 4 years that we can win in 2016 with Rubio, but long term I don’t see how Republicans win elections. A blogger at Ace I think wrote this morning that the problem is that we are not creating enough conservatives. I don’t know how we create more when so many are on the government dole. It really seems like a very difficult challenge.

Maybe all we need is someone charismatic (like Rubio-hitting that hard this morning) – we discount how much that matters but charisma is half the battle. I mean we will all believe that our guy has a shot right in 2016? If the next 4 yrs don’t go so well, we get someone good out there and maybe the Democrats can only put up a retread candidate – we will have a shot right?

The hopelessness I feel this morning is bc of the fact that Demographics-wise we are completely screwed. I see the balance of power shifting towards a European-lite electorate. “Maybe policy failures will lead them back into our loving arms” you say! Well the problem is, look at Greece. Are they now rejecting socialist policies, no they double down. Once you’re a slave to gov’t you’re a slave for LIFE. And so that is why I really don’t know where we go from here other than this can’t be the party of the middle aged white guy any more if we ever want to win another national election.

Immigration has been used an issue to fire up the conservative base. Listen to talk radio and you get a steady diet of red meat about immigration and crime and anchor babies and electric fences etc.

If all you listened to was talk radio, you would think most latinos are here because they want to be taken care of by the goverment.

Offensive stuff.

Reality is much different.

There are millions of Latinos trying to move up in society, take care of their families and are basically conservative.

The party has to appeal to them and stop using immigration as a tool to fire up the base.

Something like the dream act is something the base might emotionally reject but I believe people could come to accept it if the party leadership makes a strong case for it.

Just not appearing hostile would go a long way.

I was actually completely oblivious to the fact you were being sarcastic about Jeb until I saw the footnote… he was a popular governor of Florida, he’s known for having a great rapport with Hispanics, and with the great speech at the RNC with the inner-city minorities standing behind him about “how critical education is and how charter schools are delivering, and if you don’t believe me just look at Jamal here, he’s in law school now” he seems to have a way of articulating conservatism in a way that actually humanizes it… as of now I would support him in 2016 in a second.

You need a good, simple model to use as an analogy. Don’t talk about Bils and Trils, talk about something easier that represents bils and trils.