Here's the issue. Before when a party lost, they took a hard look at themselves and wondered where they went wrong to persuade the population and then adapted their views to be better in line with the population. This is while also trying to obviously sway their views to the original idea, otherwise the party will lose coherence over time and perhaps merge with the other party.

But what's been happening is... lack of acknowledgement of mistakes. Not that mistakes weren't made - they were - but the idea of making a mistake, i.e. making an error... is somehow a grave sin. That they're somehow mere mortals now instead of divinely anointed representatives who are incapable of making mistakes.

This makes sense too, since they tend to court the religious group and if you say the infallible God speaks through you then how are you able to make mistakes without undermining your entire message? Not only are mistakes not allowed but no change in policy is also allowed otherwise it, again, undermines the entire message. This is particularly true when that's a central message that you've been running for decades. A core component of your party are people who believe this for literally generations now. They support you not only in votes but fundraising as well. You cannot lose those people even though their numbers are dwindling due to age and growing irreligiosity of the subsequent generations.

So whether or not you believe it, you are required to never change. Since the population is leaving you behind and your views become outdated where a shrinking fridge of the population has your support, what can you do? Seems like you have only two options:

• bite the bullet and change, or
• destroy entire voting blocks to make sure that your hardcore supporters vote and everyone else has a hard time

The problem is that the definition of conservatism is preservation of the status quo. There's no problem with this - a car requires both a gas and a brake pedal to function best. The problem is that Republicans have stopped being a brake. They slammed on the emergency brake and want to reverse. They froze the progress of the United States at a particular time - somewhere around 1950s (but with 2020s economics and affordability measures) - and want to go back to that time. That's not conservatism. After all, conservatives should slow down progress until enough of the population has adopted the new norms. Case in point: romantic love was a liberal idea that's widely adopted and even championed by conservatives. Same with interfaith and interracial marriage, not to mention divorce (ignore the very fridge but very loud mouth breathers). This is fine - this is conservatism. You rail against progress but when the tide turns, you adopt it. As a result, conservatives should - and I'd say must - adopt the new norms which includes not only abortion (which they mostly do with primarily the Evangelicals causing problems since even majority of Catholics approve of abortion) and they also should be adopting new norms like gay marriage as well. This is what conservatism is. You fight against liberals changing the status quo (since not all of it is good) but once it's become widely adopted (and abortion and gay marriage are now widely accepted) then they should change their stance.

What's holding them back? The Evangelicals that they've been courting for decades. Kissing up to the religious right is what's holding the party together.

This also explains why they're so ready to pounce to any other source of revenue, such as big business and even foreign interests. It's because members of the Happy Clappy can only make you so much money, particularly when the generations are literally dying off and the young mostly scoff at your ideas.

There is a way out but it'll be messy. There is a growing divide among the religious conservatives and that wedge is environmentalism. I.e. a growing number believe that God has given them stewardship over the Earth so they must protect it. This means splintering off, fighting big business, and adopting more liberal ideas on the fiscal front with large investments into new technologies. This should cause a rift wide enough to break the religious right in half which would allow the Republicans to change the platform to something people would actually vote for. At least that's my hope. I'm not holding my breath. I think there's a higher probability that we'll have an actual left-wing party in the US. Not Democrats since they're center-right but actual left-wing politicians. Whatever change we'll have, it'll be messy but it'll be quick. The failure of the Tea Party (and the current crumbling of the Trumpists back into the GOP) has clearly shown that the US favors only two main parties.

We'll see what happens but those who want fewer people to vote certainly stand against American core principles.