...if the rapidly declining number of "base" Republican conservatives continue to steer their ship to the hard right. There are some attractive ideas among those conservative core values, but not a broad enough or specific enough number of campaign planks to even begin to win 50% of the vote plus 1.

It's a simple matter of electoral arithmetic. Until the GOP begins to move more towards where the majority of Americans are, more center-right, they have no chance of winning very many elections.

The Democrats are probably clicking their heels each time proponents of the "hard right" make claims or allegations unacceptable to the majority of Americans who are closer to the "middle". The base GOP is killing itself and the two-party system along with it.

What's better? To for the GOP to move more to the center, win some elections and regain some political currency...or maintain strict adherence to largely unpopular hard right core values at the expense of becoming a weaker and weaker political force?

The answer seems pretty clear to me. I'd love to return to the days of a two-party system and the checks and balances that would result. But the way things are going, it isn't going to happen anytime soon. All the claims that "60% of Americans are conservatives" fall in the same category of totally unsubstantiated, whistle-in-the-dark wishes as some of the other partisan stuff that gets posted here.

Like I've said before...it's a matter of electoral arithmetic. Politics is fundamentally a business. A product (candidates) must be created, financed and marketed to achieve the desired result. Until the GOP embraces that concept, all of the complaining and accusing that's been done by the "base" will continue to have no particular effect. That would be a shame.