So how did Democrats work themselves out of their trough and pick that electoral lock? One big answer was Bill Clinton, who in his 1992 campaign staged a frontal challenge to Democratic orthodoxies. The American people, he said, trust us with neither their safety nor their money. He took on issues from welfare to free trade to the hot-button question of crime, often appearing in front of a “wall of blue” of police officers. He embraced the death penalty, and said of abortion that it should be “safe, legal and rare.” It was not always attractive—he went back to Arkansas to preside over the execution of a mentally challenged convict—but he did manage to alter voters’ ideas of what Democrats stood for.
In this sense, Mitt Romney campaigned as the “anti-Clinton.” Not once did he say to the base of his party, "You’re wrong about this issue; here’s why." No doubt he and his campaign concluded that he could not win the nomination with a direct challenge. My strong hunch is that a GOP candidate in 2016 will have to do just that if he or she is to have a chance in November.
A second answer is that Republicans, like Democrats before them, are bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. Just as Democrats in the ’70s and ’80s competed with each other in primaries in staking out positions to gratify the party’s liberal-left base, Republican candidates in the primaries lunged for positions—from immigration to social issues—guaranteed to alienate them from the middle.
And here is a crucial parallel to what Democrats had to learn in the late 1980s: If voters believe you do not respect their values, they will not care much about your programs. Back then, the problem for Democrats was a sense that they had contempt for traditional values. Today, the problem for Republicans is that when people hear Rush Limbaugh call a young woman a “slut” or watch Sheriff Joe Arpaio wage a campaign against Hispanics, they think they’re hearing the voice of the Republican rank and file.