How the west was lost

* The Bloomberg Scenario: Sure, he’s not even a Republican anymore – and, like Batman, he’s needed urgently by Gotham. But he – or someone like him, with profound credibility on the economy and as a reformer – could plot a plausible path back for the GOP.

Someone in this mold could articulate the GOP commitment to low taxes and a dynamic economy, move the party’s energy policy beyond “drill, baby, drill” and reach out to the more cosmopolitan voters (Hispanics, the less religious; suburban and urban Americans) without whom the Republican Party will quite literally grow old and die.

Such a leader wouldn’t be as popular down South as a Palin or a Huckabee, but could revive the party in the West and perhaps even bring it back from the dead in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast.