But not everyone was urging the party to run to the center. “No doubt the media will insist that Republicans must change, must sprint to the center, must embrace social liberalism, must accept that America is destined to play a less dominant role in the world,” Fred Barnes wrote on the blog of The Weekly Standard. “All that is hogwash, which is why Republicans are likely to reject it. Their ideology is not a problem.” 

“But there is also a hole in the Republican electorate,” he continued. “There aren’t enough Hispanics. As long as two-thirds of the growing Hispanic voting bloc lines up with Democrats, it will be increasingly difficult (though hardly impossible) for Republicans to win national elections. When George W. Bush won a narrow re-election in 2004, he got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. If Romney had managed that, he would have come closer to winning. He might even have won.”

No, the exit poll company later admitted the actual figure was more like 40%. And Bush and Rove had ginned up a housing bubble to get to that number.