Republican Reckoning Begins After Revealing Defeat

Posted: 11/07/2012 8:54 pm EST Updated: 11/08/2012 1:29 am EST, HuffPost

BOSTON -– Republican Party leaders on Wednesday began picking up the pieces of their movement, trying to figure how to put them back together.

The GOP was blindsided Tuesday, but also revealed. The Democrats' ground organization was beyond anything they'd imagined, pulling in new voters with stunning effectiveness. It exposed a major weakness in the Republican approach to winning elections, practically and intellectually.

"I don't think anyone on our side understood or comprehended how good their turnout was going to be," said Henry Barbour, a Republican committee man from Mississippi. "The Democrats do voter registration like a factory, like a business, and Republicans tend to leave it to the blue hairs."

But President Barack Obama's triumphant get-out-the-vote program also pulled back the curtain on the GOP's looming demographic demise. The exposure was so severe that there will be few inside the party who can deny the need to work toward immigration reform, as well the need to make a broader effort to communicate to parts of the electorate that the party has not tried to in the past.

There was a quick move to embrace the need for change, from the ranks of the party's next generation of elected leaders, as well as from its online flame-throwers.

(More here.)