The fix Bush finds himself in is this: So much power remains in the old Republican Party that he had to forcefully define himself as a conservative and skip over problematic issues. But that left little–other than the multicultural visuals–to attract people who might make up the new Republican Party.

That matters in states like California because, in modern politics at least, change comes from the top.

In recent elections, two women and one moderate of Indian heritage have been party nominees for either governor or U.S. senator. Even though they were not the traditional GOP candidates, they were tripped up by the R behind their names. Whatever their own candidacies’ weaknesses, they also paid for the image of their party.

In 2016, Bush and any other Republican seeking non-traditional voters will have an additional problem in California and elsewhere: the conflict between the old party’s antipathy toward Obama and his outsized popularity among their new targets.