QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Nov 5, 2008 -> 01:26 AM)
Some of this is going to your heads. This is a mandate here and now, just like President Bush was a mandate back in 2000 with a Republican majority. These things go in cycles, so slow your roll.
I think a lot of it is overstated. I mean the margins nationally aren't exactly anything that screams mandate. But there's no denying that America will continue to trend more socially liberal, if not in perpetuity, for as long as it takes until we truly reach full equality.
If the Republican party wants to cling to their current anti-gay platform, they'll be completely irrelevant in the not-all-that-distant future. If they continue to be the party which seeks to suppress science (Global warming, stem cell research, etc.) and rely heavily on the undereducated (no-college whites were the least likely of any cross section to vote for Obama) in an increasingly educated electorate, they will find themselves completely marginalized.
In short, the Republican party will have to evolve (if they believe such a thing can occur), not necessarily in the next election, or even in the one after that, but in the next generation. The Republican party, which I have no doubt will still alive and well 40, or 52, or 64 years from now, will be a completely different party when the second female president of the United States gives her acceptance speech, kisses the next first lady, and walks off stage, the first openly-gay president.