CPAC 'GOP minority outreach' panel goes as well as you'd expect

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The government collects tax revenues, so the only essential question on the table after that is who the "goodies" get passed out to.  Those to whom politicians are not willing to hand out goodies will not give them support.  GOP is grasping onto an increasing share of a shrinking market.  Translation: dear GOP, you're laying the groundwork for another bashing in 2016.  Enjoy.

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Voters have interests, and most of the time they are self-interests.  If you're going to say right off the bat that their interests aren't worth serving, then you're opting out of competing for their votes and they'll go to someone else.  George W. Bush got lots of Hispanic votes, but that wasn't merely because of his conservative stances on some social issues and threw out some Spanish sentences now and then, but he also backed, and tried to deliver on, comprehensive immigration reform.  If after handsomely endowing the military and doling out tax cuts for business, the GOP has no more "goodies" to give to anyone else, so be it, but they're opting out of getting votes, and in this case, that means opting out of the electoral votes of a bunch of places in the southwest.  If the party has made that decision already, then there is no point holding panels or pretending to do "outreach" or complaining that those voters are going on masse to the other party, or demonizing them for doing so.  It's like refusing to play a game and then blaming someone else for competing or winning it.

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Sure, defense spending has gone down as a percentage of the federal budget since the '50's, largely as a result of social welfare program spending.  It's still one of the big three in terms of federal spending, and that by a long shot.  Plus, spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last eleven years (by both administrations) has been high.  The merits of all this are of course on the table for debate.  But, for the purposes of this thread, the GOP has to make a fundamental decision about getting behind some version of comprehensive immigration reform or not and understanding the consequences of either decision.  My guess is that congressional Republicans will start to get off the dime about it in another two years or so, but given the sharp disagreement about it inside the party, it's no given.