30% of the GOP keeps the rest of the Party in the basement.

Most of the GOP's problems have to do with the perception that they are incompetent, and their Howdy Doody goes to North Korea Website isn't helping me CoMITT to Romn3y. Michael Steele should CoMITT to a M3ntal institution if he thinks the GOP of Lincoln resembles the GOP post 1956, Jackie Robinson might come back from the grave to choke you. There was a sea change in Republican policy when they sold their soul in an attempt to lock down the former Confederate States, by placating the majority White population and leaving Black voters to the Democrats. That strategy was a winning electoral strategy in the past, but now demographics have caught up to them, and now they want it both ways. The GOP isn't the same party that these heroes of the GOP would have stayed in if they were alive today.

Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, reported a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, published inSouthern Politics in the 1990s by Prof. Alexander P. Lamis, in which Lee Atwater discussed politics in the South:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger".^[4]

Herbert wrote in the same column, "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."^[22]

Who is the leader of the GOP?

Palin/Huckabee/Romney all have 1/3 support, the rest spread amongst Pawlenty/Gingrich, but like nations with heads of state, the GOP's agenda, parameters, and definitions are provided by Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity like unelected party bosses. The GOP Congressional Leadership is the least popular group of elected official, Boehner, Canter, McConnell, et al. are unknown and/or disliked.

What is clear is Barack Obama is the leader of the Democratic Party and has an average job approval rating of 56-35ish%. When any of these real people are placed head to head against Obama the gap is yawning.

The GOP is a loose group of junta leaders and war lords with fiefdoms and a major political communications gap, factions are having problems forming caucuses because the demanded hegemony from the cult of supply side economics and Evangelicals disallows candidates that are regionally tailored and so unless you have a candidate that can elegantly portrait the compassionate conservative, is uplifting, with new ideas, and the star wattage of Obama you'll see the GOP send a prototype to slaughter like Goldwater while whatever sharps might be left wait until there's an open election. Who will the Democrats nominate if Obama serves two terms? Not likely Hillary or any other known quantity. If I'm a Republican who thinks that they can win the Presidency in a normal election year, I'm waiting, like many did in 1996 when Clinton was President. The unemployment rate is Obama's key to retaining the 55-35 consent he has now.
See: http://pollingreport.com