Who's the target audience? When you read that Republicans are "surprised" by Donald Trump's popularity, wouldn't you think that Republican candidates would ask, "Why?" rather than merely try to stomp him out?
The biggest failing of this Republican party of recent years is they seem to truly believe that they don't need to listen to and adjust to people living in these current times and modify their rigidly out-of-date ideas to attract independents, conservative democrats, or others whose dissatisfaction with current Democrats leaves them open to reasonable alternatives.
They do remember they lost the last two national elections, right? They do know that their rigid adherence to policies that are MORE hostile to American middle class voters are not going to attract new adherents or voters to their party, right? They do know that abortion, guns and even fierce defense of our allies, like Israel, have not been enough for the American people to buy into their plan for America, right?
Nope. Instead Republican candidates are rigidly sticking to the imaginary where they speak of Adam Smith's 1700s free market as a possibility in today's America with its two centuries of laws governing everything from commerce to forcing the purchase of health insurance or where they argue for trickle-down economics in an America that has outsourced jobs so companies can save a buck and avoid taxes, or proposing an Obamacare "fix" that ignores the problems in our healthcare system that created the opportunity for the false promises of Obamacare in the first place.
As of January 5, 2016, I believe that Hillary Clinton will be President and it's not because everyone loves Hillary Clinton but rather because of Republican inability to adjust to reality and instead of catering to their base that will never vote Democrat, adjust to the possibility of appealing to new voters who might be persuaded to vote Republican.
For Republican candidates who hope to garner new voters to the Republican side, their strategy has now another hurdle to overcome, the Republicans' Restoring Healthcare Freedom proposal, which promises to make things even worse for private sector Americans (http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2016/01/republicans-dont-learn-and-hillary.html). For anyone who actually reads this stuff beyond the appeal of changing the flawed Obamacare, the Republican Restoring Healthcare Freedom is a loser plan.
The "Restoring Freedom" plan reinforces the criticism of Republicans as out-of-touch with the REALITY that Obamacare didn't happen in a vacuum but happened because states failed to sufficiently regulate insurers, because insurers failed to provide sufficient policies to cover people when they needed their insurance product to help pay for medical bills and continually raised prices, and did deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, and that therefore we were OPEN to Obamacare and its promises.
A lot will depend on not only who becomes the candidate for President but upon who that person chooses as a running-mate and whether that running mate is some extremist like the ever re-surfacing Paul Ryan whose ideas for America may appeal to the Republican base of voters who were going to vote Republican anyway, or whether there are substantial, solid and significant shifts that indicate that Republicans are modernizing and reaching out to the majority of people in this country who are dissatisfied with Democrats but are unwilling to buy into the extremism that Republicans just keep on pedaling.
