The GOP tries to figure out how to ditch social conservatives

But social conservatives should not be worrying about that. All the GOP ever gave them was exploitation anyway and now the GOP is making the exact wrong call trying to cut them loose so they can focus on corporate wealth and Randian social Darwinists as they retreat further into the bubble of unreality.

Social conservatism (with the exception of gay marriage) did better than Romney. What people who care about the Church’s full orbed social teaching should do is take this opportunity to invent an approach to our politics that takes into account all the people the GOP have consistently managed to unjustly ignore.

I’m beginning to suspect that may require letting the GOP go hang. I am reminded of the remark that Zippy once made about machines: they don’t do what you want them to do, they do what you design them to do. The GOP is designed by the corporate interests that control it to skillfully manipulate social conservatives into voting for crony corporatists and militarists who string them along on the family and life issues they care about, never delivering the goods, and making them vocal allies and supporters of war, torture, and neglect of the weak. The machine will keep doing what it is built to do. Our options are to retool the machine or to cease to feed the machine and build a new one. The Dems, by the way, are faced with a similar problem and Dems who are profoundly dissatisfied with their party should likewise look to retool or (I think) get out of the party and make common cause with those on the right who want a more human and humane politics.