politically speaking.. strategically speaking.... f*ck the South and the religious, they have nowhere else to go. Speaking solely from a GOP standpoint, and not discounting Gip's well taken point, the issues of gays and abortion will be a 500lb weight around the neck of the GOP in every election. Why do this to yourselves? It destroys the GOP in states like California that USE to be up for grabs. These are social issues that will resolve themselves in time, and often at home, but the longer you continue to have parties talking about abortion and gays.. then it will be the government's focus to an extent.. and that's a waste of time. I had a conversation (too brief, actually) with my father the other day that got me thinking about this. The city I spent the latter part of my childhood in was always one that was whored out by out of towners. They sold the little league and pony league park that was rich in history to Price Club and then Sam's.. Anyway, even back then when they did these unspeakable acts... the city was made up almost entirely of small independently owned businesses. Just running down the list of Little League sponsors, there were dozens and dozens of businesses throwing money at the children of the community. I remember there was a point in time in which there was a waiting list to sponsor a youth event in that city.. Now, I'm no spring chicken so to say those businesses are all gone now isn't really that shocking.. What's shocking is that they were all gone by the time I was 30 (12 years ago now).. So sometime between me being 12 and 30..an 18 year span, small business in just that small city vanished.. gone.. no longer and that was BEFORE we had our first Walmart in the area.. now the Walmartization of that area has taken foot, it's just like the rest of the country. No one works for themselves anymore. You want to change something about America? Start there.