A nearly impossible electoral vote map, for one thing. In 2012, with better candidates, the GOP ticket won only 1 more state than in 2008 — Indiana, a deep-red state Obama carried in 2008 because of voters’ disgust with Bush, whose electoral votes were a gimme for the GOP in 2012. In short, the GOP failed to reclaim a single swing state in 2012 despite running their most “moderate” (a relative term) candidate and spending $1 billion dollars trying to sell him to voters.
It won’t get better for them in 2016; demographic trends are against them, and more states will turn blue as angry white males become an ever-shrinking component of the electorate. But there’s another reason why Republicans can’t win in 2016, regardless of whether Hillary is the Democratic nominee: They won’t nominate a candidate who isn’t anti-gay, and they can’t win with one who is.
Religious conservatives probably have enough influence in key primary states to block the path to nomination, and opposing gay marriage probably is a litmus test they’ll apply to candidates. But their views are at odds with the nation’s electorate as a whole. “If you’re a candidate for president who refuses to oppose homosexual marriage, I don’t see how you get elected,” said Steve Scheffler, a Republican national committeeman from Iowa. “You’re going to get clobbered.”
Thus, all of the GOP’s potential candidates are trapped on the horns of a dilemma. To get nominated, they will have to pander to the anti-gay bigots in their party by opposing gay marriage. But doing so will cost them the November election. (An election they maybe couldn’t win anyway.) If they can’t get the religious conservatives to fall into line with the country’s cultural shift on gay rights, and I don’t see how they can, there will be no way out for them.