That's my hope. This is why I believed that for the sake of the GOP, Obama had to win. The short-term loss of an administration provides the opportunity for a long-term win for the party. But in order for the long-term win to be realized, the party leadership has to realize the significance of this loss -- this party's platform is no longer structurally sound. A majority of Americans will no longer stand for or on a platform that combines divisive social issues with bellicose foreign policy and egregious fiscal mismanagement.

But on the other hand, change will be difficult. If the party drops the religiously-motivated social rhetoric, it risks losing the voting bloc that has perhaps singlehandedly kept the party viable. To end its love affair with fiscal mismanagement, it will have to stop the overindulgent defense spending and stop offering fake tax cuts; and in the case of the former, the party loses its identity (that is, its identity outside of the religious right), and with the latter, it loses its most effective selling point.

The fact that Palin -- the embodiment of compassionate-conservative religious-right politics -- is still being heralded as "the rising star" of the party, makes me wonder whether the party is really going to be willing to reform.

You don't believe Mormons are part of the religious right?

Well said. We'll see what happens over the next little while. I'm not confident that Palin retains that image.

Do you think all your reborn donut-eating friends would really vote for a Democrat if the GOP dropped its social platform? Or would they just not vote?

I think it is the religious right that doesn't believe mormons belong. Mormons are always wanting to belong to something, or anything.

I thought when the students at our religion's owned university protested the tights worn on those well rounded buttocks at Gold's Gym the RR would welcome us and our Mitt with open arms, alas our belief on Jesus' geneology did us in.

We will survive!

Oh absolutely...I was just joking. One of the values in my mind (to the Mormon church) of dropping the social platform is that it would make Mormons think for themselves in a political sense and not an "us against the Satan-controlled world" sense. Mormons used to be heavily Democratic.

How often to defeated Veeps become the party's hope? I think Palin can go back to moose hunting, her first dude and my dreams.

With the Mormons leading the charge in California maybe the RR will let Mitt gently lead them by the hand.......

No I don't. We're not part of a cohesive unit, and we belong nowhere. In many respects, Mormons are wannabees. But they are more effective when they are Harry Reid, or Mitt Romney, pragmatists with no label.

My MIL is a classic example of one who continually votes against her own political opinions and interests in order to uphold the social platform.

I was thinking last night how the Prop 8 fight is going to entrench that mentality even moreso. A divisive yet mobilizing political issue that intermingled religious persecution just moved another generation into that mentality. Think how many testimonies will be born by parents grateful to have had the opportunity to demonstrate faithfullness to their kids by heeding the prophet's call and being persecuted by godless sodomites in the act. The wicked taketh the truth to be hard.........

lol