Big changes are coming to the GOP. Let's hope that Chris Christis and Rick Santorum are not a part of that change.

A Daily Caller headline reads:  Poll: Republicans say party needs major overhaul, Christie best positioned to help.

A word to the wise.  If Christie  represents the new leadership in the GOP,  if redesigning the GOP means a turn to the Left,  as has been the case for the past two decades,  this party will lose its base,  and – easily – 3 to 7 million voters in the coming campaigns.  It cannot win any national election with that scenario in mind.  Christie's conduct,  in the closing days of the election,  was poorly timed and the stuff of which a compromising "political opportunist" is made.  In point of fact,  the big guy's love-lock on Obama, may have cost Romney the election.  Christie did more to "prove" Obama a good guy and a concerned leader,  than any other single factor during the 2012 campaign cycle.  And,  as it turns out,  two months after Sandy,  Obama's "concern" was staged,  and Christie was the dupe.   

The GOP is ready for a well spoken,  consistent and compassionate conservative and will not win the coming national election without someone from that camp.  

John Boehner can manipulate the House into keeping him as Speaker and sell out his party in the current negotiations,  but he cannot win the midterms without the tea-party   . . . . . . . .  the same tea party from which he is moving. 

It is THAT constituency which did not show up at the polls,  in the past election.  While Obama was losing 8 million of his base,  Romney and company lost 1.5 million and lost an election that could have been easily won,  had he been a true (read "consistent") conservative.  Romney did not overcome the reality of his compromised conservatism.    While he is a conservative,  the problem of his compromise was not treated with enough regard.  Besides trying to solve the problem with the selection of a conservative and well liked running mate,  Romney needed to court the conservative base.  He did not.    In fact,  in the closing weeks of the election,   he avoided the issue altogether.  Fox News offered him a one hour interview the day before election eve,  and Romney,   for some reason even God might not understand,  turned it down.  

As things stand,  now,  Senator Marco Rubio is the serious alternative we need to be looking at.  If Jeb Bush is not the big spender his brother was,  he might be a serious alternative,  as well.    Chris Christie is not the other “viable” choice for the GOP, however. 

The party does need a major overhaul,  but it is in the midst of that overhaul,  right now.  It has congressional power,  today, because of the tea-party effort that came out to vote in 2010 and "leadership" ignores that reality at great risk to its future.  

It would be a huge mistake to think that the GOP can  win another national election with just tea-party help.  It is a big mistake to think that 2010 was all about the "tea-party" to the exclusion of Independents and conservative minded minorities.   We need never to lose sight of the fact that the "tea party" must never be the issue of an election.  Rather,  it is the values of personal responsibility,  commonsense fiscal strategies and the issue of   "states rights,"  the bed rock of a representative American democracy,  that are the issues that can and should unite us all.     Values,  not party politics, are what the tea-party was/is  [originally] all about.  I hope we have not lost sight of that fact,  along the way. 

 I hasten to add this caveat.    If the tea-party coalition allows itself to be sucked into the general social debate,  it will lose its influence,  altogether.  Besides Christie,  Rick Santorum is another “non-starter.”  In fact,  a Santorum candidacy would spell the end of both the tea-party and the GOP in one single election.  

I am a tea-party conservative,  but I believe the social debate should be held in the context of state politics.  Again,  personal responsibility,  a balanced budget and states rights are the three issues that can and should the national polemic of the New GOP.    The 2010 elections were won by tea-party diligence and a return call to these  limited demands.  Santorum is a social agenda opportunist and a huge mistake for the GOP.    

Let's stay on track and refuse to be guided by a Bloomberg poll or any suggestions of the Left.  They are not our friends.