UPDATE: No one is going to know what lesson the GOP learned from this election for a while. First the party has to settle its internal warfare for control of the party between the "true" ideological conservatives, the moderates, and the social conservatives/evangelicals. Once that struggle is resolved, we'll see what lesson, if any, the GOP learned or didn't learn.

I continue to think the suburban moderates won't vote for the GOP until the social conservatives/evangelicals have less dominance. Those latter folks, whose stubborn insistence on imposing their views on the rest of the country has always been short-sighted and arrogant (in that they fervently believe only their way is the right way), need to get the message that our country is a democracy of inclusion, not exclusion, and that our country needs to allow different points of view when it comes to religiosity and its attendant moralism. Their type of puritanical moralism is passe'; the majority of our country has moved beyond their narrow views. Whether they can ever change to absorb this is very questionable. Inevitably, however, they will die off, and the younger generation, which is more broad-minded, will take over the GOP. Just not in my lifetime.

ORIGINAL COMMENT: We'll see. From my perspective, the message to the GOP was "Move away from the social conservatives, including evangelicals, as your base." This includes leaving Sarah Palin in Alaska, not running her for national office. The moderates, who predominate in the suburbs, aren't going along with the program advocated by those folks, and without the moderates, the GOP will keep losing. I suspect that after Obama has served two terms the GOP will see the wisdom of bipartisanship and the politics of inclusion, but I could be very wrong--the GOP may turn out to be intransigent. If so, their loss.