[whitedog57]

It is never black and white. There are shades of social conservatives. But the left will paint a picture of social conservatives as fringe religious crazies. The more they are successful at doing that, the more we lose the middle. And you can’t win without the middle.

[Mr. Silverback]

What you’ve said is true, but irrelevant. In 1984 the media—with far more control of information than they have now and a much less skeptical aufdience—were painting social conservatives as crazies who wanted nuclear war for Jesus right after all the gays died of AIDS. Hello, 49 state landslide.

You are sawing away at one of the legs of the stool. To say you aren’t doing the cause any favors would be understatement.

[Mr. Silverback]

BTW, I should have said theoretically true. It's theoretically true that we can lose the middle by including strong social conservatives, and it's theroetically true the media could successfully paint us as nuts, but in the real world we (a) haven't lost them (1980 and 1984) and (b) the media has been trying to paint the Tea Party as racist whack job central since April of 2009 and have gotten nowhere, so changing gears to anti-choice whack job central isn't going to work.