Every now and again pop culture and politics meet (in my head anyway) and today the GOP is meeting up with The Clash’s song “Should I stay or should I go“. In years past I have actually told friends of mine that I thought that being an unaffiliated voter was irresponsible-after all in many states Independents cannot vote in the primary. In states with open primaries, there are 19, independents can vote. These days however, I am starting to change my tune and ask some of the questions posed in the classic song.

“Exactly whom I supposed to be?”

Why, you ask? Let’s just say that I am sick and tired of watching my party-on the local and national level-hand the other side the frying pan while begging them to beat us soundly with it about our head and ears. The GOP consistently has given in to the “base” which they describe as “Conservative Christians” when the party on both the national and the local level have zero statistical data to back that claim up. One thing I can tell you from first hand experience-GOP members differ on the issues depending on their age, their gender, their religious affiliation, their income and education level and their socioeconomic background. In other words-there IS NO one size fits all approach that will magically appeal to ALL GOP members. The closest thing I have ever seen to actual statistical analysis of the nation wide GOP base is a recent poll published in the Washington Post this week.

Some interesting highlights of that poll were:

“when you look at the 18 –to-39-year-old demographic, you find a massive 12 point advantage for Republicans, who are preferred 48 percent to 36 percent. This is, in fact, the closest the GOP gets to outright majority support among the various age brackets.”

Of course one could argue that perhaps said 18 to 39 year old’s are sick and tired of being out of work in Obama’s pathetic excuse for an economy and that may be coloring their opinion of the Republican party.

“Don’t know which clothes even fit me”

An analysis of the Washington Times January poll titled “The GOP’s new base?” on the website RStreet goes on to shed light on the GOP’s attractiveness to the “every man”, meaning those with different educational levels.

“The assumption that the GOP does better with less-educated members of society also crashes headlong into a wall of contrary data. True, the GOP is preferred by six percentage points among those with a high school education or less. But among college graduates, that balloons to 13 points.  Contrary to the view that college renders its attendees liberal, the groups most likely to believe Republicans are superior handlers of the economy are either college graduates or people who have attended some college.

Finally, the story of a massive GOP gender gap is complicated by this data, as women prefer Republicans by four percentage points over Democrats.”

One could conceivably argue that those who attend colleges and graduate with a four years degree are experiencing some kind of intellectual rebellion against the all-too-common Socialist brainwashing that passes for education in our nation’s colleges and this resulted in the improved perception of the GOP post-graduation. I would also like to ask Sandra Fluke-where’s that war on women now?

The real stand out piece of information from this analysis that struck me was this:

“Still, the fact that the GOP is drawing proportionally more support from the college educated and the young than it is from the elderly and the non-college educated is a sign of a vibrant new base that the GOP could court with policy dexterity and recalibrated messaging.”

Unfortunately with the current leadership I just cannot see that happening. Not when we have the Congressional GOP leadership engaging in an attempt to sell out the nation in a deal with the Obama Administration this week on immigration. Yeah, that’s a GREAT idea guys. Especially when you consider the following in an already divided nation that is on its economic knees:

Leave aside the harm cheap labor being dumped on the country does to the millions of unemployed Americans. What does it mean for the Republican Party?

Citing surveys from the Pew Research Center, the Pew Hispanic Center, Gallup, NBC News, Harris polling, the Annenberg Policy Center, Latino Decisions, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Hudson Institute, Schlafly’s report overwhelmingly demonstrates that merely continuing our current immigration policies spells doom for the Republican Party.

Immigrants — all immigrants — have always been the bulwark of the Democratic Party. For one thing, recent arrivals tend to be poor and in need of government assistance. Also, they’re coming from societies that are far more left-wing than our own. History shows that, rather than fleeing those policies, they bring their cultures with them. (Look at what New Yorkers did to Vermont.)

This is not a secret. For at least a century, there’s never been a period when a majority of immigrants weren’t Democrats.

At the current accelerated rate of immigration — 1.1 million new immigrants every year — Republicans will be a fringe party in about a decade.

Thanks to endless polling, we have a pretty good idea of what most immigrants believe.

According to a Harris poll, 81 percent of native-born citizens think the schools should teach students to be proud of being American. Only 50 percent of naturalized U.S. citizens do.

While 67 percent of native-born Americans believe our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, only 37 percent of naturalized citizens agree.

No wonder they vote 2-1 for the Democrats.

The two largest immigrant groups, Hispanics and Asians, have little in common economically, culturally or historically. But they both overwhelmingly support big government, Obamacare, affirmative action and gun control.”

“If I go there will be trouble, but if I stay it will be double!”

Well that’s just great! So the GOP, who are supposed to be the defenders of all things Constitutional, all things principled and positive are ready to hike up Lady Liberty’s skirt and chuck her head first under the bus in order to support the legalization of a group of people whose stated beliefs run counter to all those things. When I do the math and add my own personal experiences over the past two platform conventions I have taken part in (some emotionally upsetting, and some bordering on the physically violent), the lack of hard data to support that only the Evangelical members of the party are the lifeblood and the “true conservative base”, the tendency to be nasty to those who do not trumpet the party line on gay rights issues and add to all of that what the GOP is proposing to do on immigration-I find myself asking the same question The Clash posed in their cult classic song in 1982-“Should I stay or should I go?”