Red New England?

[Rockefeller GOP]

Until the GOP drops the religious right, its gone.

BUT if the GOP DID drop the Religious Right, it'd be right back in the fold.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Until the GOP drops the religious right, its gone.

The GOP doesn't have to drop the religious right, they just need to stop putting so much emphasis on social issues and governing by hostage crisis.

George HW Bush was a pragmatic conservative who won the last GOP landslide and carried much of the Northeast by convincing margins. That's what the Republican Party has to return to: pragmatic conservativism. We don't have to drop the Religious Right or become the Democratic Party. Just stop being ing insane about everything.

Winning elections and being conservative are not mutually exclusive.

I think this pretty much nails it.

No, the Democrats were BARELY out of the age of being the party of the South.  Hell, Carter even brought it back for a little while.  New England, and the Northeast as a whole, votes for the Democrats because they are seen as more liberal.  And that's that. 

Nice simplified version of history, but most of us don't accept the myth that New England has just always been liberal and the two parties have just switched places over time ... mostly true because it's stupid and false.

[Rockefeller GOP]

While there are moderate center-righties in New England who have been voting Democrat because the Republicans have gone of the deep end, saying that bringing them back presupposes that there are THAT many of them that they could turn these huge New England Democratic margins into Republican victories, which is ridiculous.

If the GOP would go back to the party of HW and Dole, they could turn NH into a real swing state, ME into a lean D state, and guide MA and CT over to the right a little bit. However, one of the main reasons these moderate GOPers are voting D now is because NE is overall a very liberal area, and their progressive tradition is enough to make it so that the only way it can go red is for the GOP to be the liberal party.

Which makes this debate moot.

Again, you start with the premise (which is nothing more than wishful thinking and revisionist history) that the GOP has EVER been a "liberal" party.