[TomGuy]

It gets even worse:

73% of Republican voters believe their leaders in Washington are out of touch with the party base.

[ziravan]

"73% of Republican voters believe their leaders in Washington are out of touch with the party base."

I agree with this statement. I have first-hand experience that the "leadership" in Washington is not acting in our best interests. It's about power over principles. The problem is, when you sacrifice your principles for power, you end up losing both.

The so-called "leaders" in Washington know they are out of touch. THAT is why they wanted to have a "listening tour" at the first of the year. The meta-messages there were astounding: We didn't bother to listen to you before, but now we care. I would call that a frank admission to being out of touch. I would also say that it's an admission that the solutions they thought were necessary amounted to little more than a pep talk and not change in MO. Kind of like a "jobs summit".

When the "leadership" started talking about listening tours, I started saying THIS on the campaign trail, "I don't need a 'listening tour' to understand you; I'm a native speaker of our language."

[BP2]

73% of Republican voters believe their leaders in Washington are out of touch with the party base.

This should shake up the GOP leadership to the core.

The *TOP* GOP Leadership and their delegates, attempting to be appear Inclusive and Diverse to the MSM and the Left, alienates the Party Base while also wasting efforts and resources on groups of voters that are very, VERY unlikely to change their voting pattern.

Let me offer evidence to ONE of MANY examples of this with the RNC
(BTW, this is not about skin color so much as it's about demographic voting blocks)...

1) First, let's go back and look at the RNC Chairmanship Election in January:

RNC Chairman Vote

Source: CQPolitics, and Poll Pundit

Candidate	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5	Round 6
Michael Steele	46	48*	51*	60*	79*	91*
Katon Dawson	28	29	34	62	69	77
Saul Anuzis	22	24	24	31	20	Withdrew
Ken Blackwell	20	19	15	15	Withdrew
Mike Duncan	52*	48*	44	Withdrew

     * Candidate won that Round of voting

2) Now, let's look at the #1 and #2 candidates for the RNC Leadership spot:

Michael Stephen Steele is the first person of African American descent to serve in a state-wide office in Maryland, as the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007, where he chaired the Minority Business Enterprise taskforce and actively sought expanded affirmative action policies in the corporate world. He was the first Republican elected to the office.

During Katon Dawson's South Carolina GOP chairmanship, the South Carolina GOP has made progress with outreach to African-Americans and in promoting minorities to leadership positions, electing its first African-American member of the Republican National Committee from the South, and in 2008 the first black Republican State Representative since Reconstruction was elected. In August 2008, Dawson personally argued in an open letter to the Forest Lake Country Club, a whites-only country club of which he was a member, to include minority members (and later resigned his 12-year membership) stating "we have a responsibility to expeditiously make right this longstanding wrong." According to Dawson, he first learned of the restriction on the 80-year-old deed in 2008, and while there are no black members, African-Americans are frequent guests at the club and on the golf course.

3) Now, let's look at the CURRENT GOP.com website front page.

At the top are rotating are images that attempt to show Diversity within the party. A non-scientific count of these rotating images show 8 total Caucasian men and women, 5 Hispanic and 2 Asian faces:

The remaining 10 faces are shown here:

4) NOW, despite all of these RNC efforts to demonstrate Diversity and Inclusiveness toward African Americans, here is a recent Gallop Poll showing Job Approval numbers for Obama since Michael Steele took over as head of the RNC.

ONLY ONE GROUP shows a HIGHER Job Approval Rating for Obama, DESPITE that SAME demographic group having national Unemployment that rivals that of the Great Depression:

Draw your own conclusions.

However, it certainly appears that either: 1) the RNC's message is flawed (i.e., NOT espousing true Conservatism); or 2) certain voting blocks simply will NOT change their support for Obama and the Democrats — regardless of the skin color of the RNC Chairman and its Diverse agenda.

Tip #1 to the RNC: Appeasement doesn't work on the playground, the sports field, or the battlefield. It does NOT work in Politics either.

Tip #2 to the RNC: ALWAYS support your Base FIRST — ALWAYS.

[Cacique]

They could care less, the same crowd that infiltrated the Democratic party was busy at the same time infiltrating the GOP. Do you think that the same cabal that infiltrated every single institution in this country with leftists somehow left the GOP and the military out of the equation? I don’t think so. The problem is that the rest of us at the bottom haven’t figured that out yet. The GOP has become the rear guard of the progressive left by pretending to oppose what is going on...

[cookcounty]

"73% of Republican voters believe their leaders in Washington are out of touch with the party base. "

It's a religious issue: McConnell and Company believe "passion" is a sin.

One of their major problems is that they are afraid to pick a fight with all the Democrat boosters in the press.