What Are They Thinking?

John Cole nails the Republican birth control position:

The craziest thing to me about this whole Rush flare-up and the lunatic fringe of the right doubling down on the slut issue is how politically incompetent it all is. I remember someone calling this political malpractice, and that is correct. I’m really not used to this kind of political incompetence from Republicans- usually they are horribly wrong on the issues, but win the political battles. This time, not so much.
What they should have done is simple. They should have claimed victory when Obama made the modification to the mandate. When the initial mandate came out from HHS, there was a multi-day freakout, the Bishops and the prudes generated a lot of press, and Team Obama looked at things, calibrated the mandate so that so-called “religious freedom” was preserved, and the entire issue would have been taken off the table if the right had done the smart thing and just claimed victory. They could have celebrated it as a triumph of religious freedom over Obama, and could have claimed that their political might forced Obama to capitulate. He gave them an out and a political victory while maintaining a political victory for himself- he created a win/win situation for them. They could have used it to their advantage- “Obama attempted to assault religious freedom and our collective political power and might was able to make sure that religious organizations no longer have to provide contraception.” They could have made this into a big win for the team.
But instead of seizing upon it, they instead shit the bed and decided to double down, and now we have near 70% of the country looking at the Republicans like they are some kind of freak show, with their leaders introducing the Blunt and Rubio amendments and their spiritual leaders calling all women who use contraceptives sluts and prostitutes and the base doubling down and following their lead. It’s bewildering to watch. If I were Frank Luntz or the other Republican strategists I would be pulling my hair out and trying to get them into a room listening to Kenny Rogers looped for 24 hours.

The problem for Republicans is the base doesn't want to claim victories by accepting compromise.  They think they can push through any position they want, and if they can't, they'll grind everything to a halt.  Republicans could have taken control of the Senate in 2010 if the base would have selected candidates who are generally moored in reality.  Instead, they selected Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, and lost a couple of winnable seats.  In a Republican primary election, I expect the rural tea party base to select the least qualified, craziest candidate almost every time.  Look at the county by county breakdown of primary results so far.  Most of the rural areas vote for Santorum while most of the metropolitan areas vote for Romney.  In the general election, most of the rural areas will vote for whichever crappy candidate the Republicans settle on, while the metropolitan areas will vote for Obama.  Republicans are fighting a losing demographic battle, and are dooming themselves to future defeat if they don't change.  God love them, because women, blacks, Hispanics and young people won't.