The Republican Party’s internal struggle over how to expand its reach will play out in stark relief at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, with activists locked in a near-civil war over the basic question of who should be part of the movement – and who should not.

This year’s meeting has already made news with its exclusion of notable names from the invite list: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. 

There will be plenty of conservative stars, like Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky, along with 2012 vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (among other potential 2016 presidential candidates). And attendees will have a chance to reacquaint themselves with familiar names and faces from the not-so-distant past such as Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and the ubiquitous Donald Trump.

But the annual conservative confab comes at a serious and crucial moment for the Republican Party: Its last two presidential nominees lost decisively to President Barack Obama, and its lone instrument of power -- the GOP majority in the House -- has been constantly plagued by infighting between conservative insurgents and its establishment-minded leadership.

And the American right seems as divided as ever over the path forward.

“I think, increasingly, we as Republicans have come across as intolerant and unfocused on the needs of the underserved,” said Fred Malek, a fixture of GOP politics for decades.

“And we need to speak much more to the aspirational needs of people, and not speak about the dependence of the ‘47 percent,’” he added, referencing 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s infamous comments, “but rather how the ‘47 percent’ become part of the 25 percent or 10 percent or 1 percent.”

Ideological fealty to marginalize GOP?
That internal struggle threatens to spill into the open at CPAC, a gathering that has been established as an important gathering for official Republicans, yet still attracts the kind of stalwart conservative activists who have helped to ignite this GOP family feud. 

“I thought it was a mistake to exclude Christie,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman who remains active in the party’s political leadership. “It reinforces this narrow, closed stereotype of Republicans.”

Christie angered conservatives by agreeing to implement insurance exchanges under Obama’s health care reform law, and for praising the president’s handling of Hurricane Sandy just days before the election. McDonnell upset conservatives with his new transportation law, which includes some new taxes.

“I would argue that they do not have too much to offer up in terms of the future of the conservative movement,” Jeff Bell, of the American Principles Project, said of the two governors.

Those warring views cut to the heart of the modern GOP’s internal rift. On one side are conservatives who are eager to excommunicate Republicans who commit the slightest act of ideological heresy. The other faction is composed of Republicans who worry that the party’s insistence on ideological fealty will continue to marginalize the GOP amid a changing electorate.

Though no immediate resolution is in sight, the Republican National Committee will weigh in following its own autopsy of the party’s shortcomings during last fall’s elections. It will recommend improved digital operations and a more robust outreach, but is also expected to emphasize the need for some candidates to speak in less shrill terms about sensitive issues.

“We can’t run the same campaigns. For some, it means that boneheaded comments about rape and women – that’s just not going to fly,” said a source familiar with the report, referencing GOP Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri who lost winnable races last fall due to their controversial comments about rape.

Romney's first remarks since election
The forthcoming RNC report and this week’s CPAC gathering add up to a potentially pivotal week for the future of the party.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters file photo

Sen. Marco Rubio addresses the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, February 9, 2012.

And though McDonnell and Christie were excluded from the gathering, other corners of the GOP will be well-represented. Tea Party darlings like Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, will each speak.

Also on display will be conservatives who may hope to unify the GOP as the party’s presidential nominee in 2016. Along with Rubio, Paul and Ryan, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will also address attendees.

The influential conference concludes with an oft-hyped, closely watched straw poll of attendees’ preference in a presidential nominee.

A past winner of two such straw polls, Romney, will make his first public speech since the election on Friday. And former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose national star power has waxed and waned in the scope of a single presidential election cycle, will speak on Saturday.

“There’s going to be a lot of heat, but not much light,” on the presidential front said Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer and conservative PR guru. “It’s not going to resolve itself until the first stirrings of the 2014 midterm elections.”

Related:

On eve of CPAC, GOP searches for identity, policy principles

Obama's meeting with GOP: Cordial, but no consensus

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 14, 2013 4:31 AM EDT

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, addresses the media following a Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. From left are: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-VA, Conference Vice Chairman Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-KS, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, Rep. Susan Brooks, R-IN, Conference Chairman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-WA, and Rep. Tom Price, R-GA.

Published at 4:35 a.m. ET: After their electoral drubbing last November — their second straight in a presidential contest — Republicans have faced a choice. Do they change their policies or their tone?

For now, many top Republicans in Washington seem to have opted for the latter, deciding that a more articulate re-statement of the party's long-held principles will suffice in their effort to attract new voters to the GOP.

"I wouldn't say shift in policy," pollster Jim McLaughlin said of his advice for fellow Republicans. "Republicans have to make adjustments there, but they have to stick to their principles."

McLaughlin's words echo what many Republicans have argued since the election: It's not the party's long-held principles that are the problem, but rather, the way the party's leaders articulate those principles to voters.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., offered a perfect example of current Republican thinking when he delivered a major policy speech that rehashed a number of familiar policies on education, immigration and entitlements under his new "make life work" veneer.

The No. 2 Republican in the House re-framed some of his party's most familiar proposals as an agenda intended to ease the plight of most American families. (The lone new pronouncement was Cantor's endorsement of the thrust of the DREAM Act, a proposal to allow undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children a pathway to citizenship.)

He disputed the notion that his speech was part of a broader effort to soften the GOP's image: "The average American is not thinking about and wondering about where the Republican Party is," Cantor told one questioner.

But the Virginia congressman's speech is representative of an emerging consensus that a more modern restatement of their long-held principles will suffice in seeking to broaden the party's appeal.

And indeed, President Barack Obama's agenda seems poised to stress-test some of the Republican Party's most bedrock policies.

If Republicans can rebuff the president, it could prove the resiliency of their stances. A victory for the president, on the other hand, could tear through the GOP like a buzzsaw. The GOP is arguably facing the most direct challenge in decades to the tenets that have formed the foundation of Republican Party politics for the better part of three decades.

Public opinion shifting
Republicans' decision to hew closely to those long-held principles is not without dissent, however.

"People focus on the 2012 elections, but it's deeper than that," said former Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican who leads the moderate "Main Street Partnership."

"It can't just be tone," LaTourette argued. "Because just changing the tone is going to be like putting a lipstick on a pig — it pretties things up, but doesn't really change the fact that it's a pig."

The next four years — the midterm elections in 2014 and the next presidential contest in 2016 — will offer a major test of which school of thought is right.

Obama's second term agenda seems almost directly intended to challenge the GOP on taxes, entitlements, immigration, social issues and foreign policy.

Terminally low taxes, hawkish foreign policy, largely unfettered gun rights and opposition to abortion and gay rights have defined the GOP since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. And as recently as 2004, President George W. Bush's re-election seemed to signify a sweeping affirmation of these central principles.

But Obama already won new revenue during the first installment of the "fiscal cliff" fight, and his forthcoming budget is almost sure to seek more tax increases. The president is demanding an immigration bill and the first major gun law since the 1990s. Obama has also consistently advocated for new gay rights, and public opinion has followed (however slowly). And last month's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that a majority of Americans support abortion rights — an issue which Democrats used against Republicans to great effect during the election — for the first time in history.

On an even more foundational issue, last November's exit polls revealed a change in tide against Republicans' opposition to new taxes under any circumstances. Almost half of voters — and 70 percent of independents — agreed that income taxes should increase, at a bare minimum, for households earning more than $250,000 per year.

For Republicans, the road map back to victory involves speaking less stridently about some of these issues, and emphasizing certain elements of the GOP platform over others. Virtually all Republicans recoil at the comments last fall about "legitimate rape" by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, but no mainstream GOP leader has suggested that the party jettison its longstanding opposition to abortion rights. The new strategy might involve sidestepping conversations altogether about abortions in the instances of rape, instead emphasizing Republican policies that might support women's economic mobility.

And already, a new effort led by former Bush political guru Karl Rove has vowed to combat candidates like Akin in primaries and help to nominate more electable Republican candidates. (A separate effort spearheaded by another onetime Bush adviser, Ed Gilliespie, and two Hispanic GOP governors, Suzana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, will look to recruit more minority Republican candidates.)

LaTourette, the former congressman, suggested the answer might be simpler. The GOP, he said, is should just get things — something, anything — done.

"There needs to be some sort of reasonable approach to demonstrate that we're all in this together," he said, "a willingness to do the doable and get things done."

Related:

NBC/WSJ poll: Majority, for first time, want abortion to be legal

Rape remarks sink two Republican Senate hopefuls

Social conservatives say they deserve seat at table in retooled GOP

By NBC's Michael Isikoff

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul bankrolling Newt Gingrich’s super PAC isn’t trying to “buy” a presidency, his top political consultant tells NBC News.  He’s just following in the footsteps of another powerful business tycoon, Joseph Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy. 

“I don’t think it’s buying a presidency any more than it was when Joe Kennedy helped his son,” Sig Rogich, a veteran Republican operative who serves as Adelson’s government affairs consultant, said in an interview about the massive donations that the casino mogul has made to Gingrich’s super PAC.

Adelson, 78, who has a personal fortune estimated at $21 billion, “plays to win” and “puts his money where his mouth is,” Rogich added. 

In the last three weeks, Adelson and his Israeli-born wife Miriam have pumped $10 million into the Winning Our Future Super PAC. Those donations provided a critical cash infusion that helped revive Gingrich’s candidacy, bankrolling attack ads against Mitt Romney in South Carolina and now Florida.  They’ve also made the Adelsons the largest known donors so far in a presidential race awash with money under new rules allowing unlimited donations to so-called super PACs. 

But the contributions have also raised new questions about Adelson’s outside role in influencing the campaign.  Those questions could intensify as a result of potentially provocative comments he has made about Israel uncovered by NBC News. 

Scott Audette / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich makes a point during the Republican presidential candidates debate in Jacksonville, Florida January 26, 2012.

Adelson owns a newspaper in Israel, 'Israel HaYom,' that backs conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and adamantly opposes any peace settlement with the Palestinians.

But while Adelson and Gingrich have bonded on the issue of a hawkish Mideast policy, especially over the threat of a nuclear Iran, some of the casino mogul’s comments could prove embarrassing.

In a talk to an Israeli group in July, 2010, Adelson said he wished he had served in the Israeli Army rather than the U.S. military—and that he hoped his young son would come back to Israel and “be a sniper for the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. (YouTube video of speech)

“I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform.  It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF ... our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back-- his hobby is shooting -- and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event.

“All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart,” he said toward the end of his talk.  

Asked about those comments, Rogich said: “No one could possibly ever think that he is anything but a loyal American.  He’s shown that time and time again.”

Rogich cited major donations that Adelson has made to medical research and other philanthropic causes that were far bigger than his political contributions, he said.

As for Israel, Rogich said: “I think that the fact that he is a Zionist and believes deeply in the preservation of Israel is so commendable.”

Newt Gingrich, who stirred controversy recently by calling the Palestinians "an invented people," appears on the cover of Sheldon Adelson's newspaper, Israel HaYom, blasting the Obama administration for its policies on Iran. "The Obama administration is denying reality," reads the headline in Hebrew. "The refusal to confront evil could cause a second Holocaust."

Gingrich, who stirred controversy recently by calling the Palestinians “an invented people,” appeared on the cover of Adelson’s Israeli newspaper blasting the Obama administration for its policies on Iran.

“The Obama administration is denying reality,” reads the headline in Hebrew. “The refusal to confront evil could cause a second Holocaust.”

When Gingrich was questioned about the money from Adelson this week, he immediately cited the casino mogul’s backing of Israel as a major reason he had received his support.

“Sheldon Adelson is very deeply concerned about the survival of Israel and believes that the Iranians represent a mortal threat to Israel and the United States,” Gingrich said in an interview while on the campaign trail in Florida.  “And he is deeply motivated by the question of having a commander-in-chief strong enough and willing to make sure the Iranians do not get nuclear weapons.”

Asked if he had promised the casino mogul anything in exchange for the money to the super PAC, Gingrich replied: “I promised him that I would seek to defend the United States and the United States allies.”

Adelson’s interests extend beyond Israel.  His personal fortune comes from a casino empire that stretches from the Vegas strip to the gambling havens of Singapore and Macau.  But his business interests have also provoked legal troubles.  

Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands,  disclosed last year that it was being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations by a former top company executive that Adelson directed him to put a local government official on its payroll in Macau — a potential violation of a U.S. anti-bribery law.  The firm has denied the allegations, saying they come from a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled former employee.

Adelson also earned a reputation in Las Vegas as a fierce foe of labor unions after he bought the legendary Sands Hotel, home base of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, and then blew it up in 1996.

About 1,500 casino workers lost their jobs.  Adelson built a spectacular new hotel in its place, the Venetian, but locked out the state’s powerful Culinary Workers Union, which resulted in street protests and lawsuits.

Union official D. Taylor (sic) said that Adelson’s security officials at the Las Vegas Sands Hotel tried to have the protestors outside his hotel arrested, but Las Vegas police refused.

“He claimed that he owned the sidewalks,” Taylor said.  Georgia Democratic “congressman John Lewis led us on the sidewalks to say that nobody’s going to own the people on the sidewalks,” he added. “Sheldon then appealed the decision of the police not to arrest us all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Taylor said Adelson lost that battle — the courts upheld a finding of anti-labor practices against his company — but now the casino mogul thinks he can purchase a presidency.

“I think it’s very scary that any one candidate would be so beholden to one persona, a billionaire, who obviously has a very specific agenda that he wants to achieve,” said Taylor.

But Rogich, Adelson’s consultant, said that agenda consists of nothing more than trying to elect a good friend who he believes “would be a great president.”

“And that’s what this process is all about — that’s why we call it America,” he said. “You have the right to spend your money how you’d like to spend it.”

From Andrew Rafferty, Carrie Dann, Jamie Novogrod

ORLANDO, Fla. – Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain claimed victory in today’s Florida straw poll, receiving more than double the amount of votes of front-runner Rick Perry.

Cain received 37 percent of the 2,657 delegate votes cast here today.  Perry followed with 15.4 percent.  Romney was a close third with 14 percent of the vote.

Cain spent this week campaigning in Florida along the I-4 corridor running between Tampa and Orlando.  His events were held in front of local county Republican groups ripe with straw poll delegates.  But his victory may also represent the result of Perry’s showing Thursday at the Fox/Google debate.

Many of those gathered for Presidency 5 – the three-day event that concluded with this straw poll – expressed concern that sniping between the front-runners had opened opportunities for the trailing candidates.  Perry surrogate Michael Williams, a former Texas Railroad commissioner and current congressional candidate, used his time in front of the delegates to try to reassure those put off by Perry's uneven performance.

"We are not electing a debater-in-chief," Williams said to applause from the crowd. "We are electing a commander-in-chief."

Perry’s national press secretary, Mark Miner, said the results were “not at all a setback” to the campaign. He dismissed the idea that the second place showing demonstrates that Perry has been unable to shake off a rough debate performance Thursday.

"Debates are part of the process but we are taking our message directly to the people. Mitt Romney has been doing debates and running for president for five and a half years and he comes in third. Must be a devastating loss for him and a morale buster for his campaign in a state like Florida after five and a half years.

The other major storyline from today’s event was Michele Bachmann's eighth-place finish – last among the contenders.  It marks another chapter in an odyssey taking her from victory this summer at the straw poll in Ames, Iowa, to a recent slip in polls and the departure of her high-profile campaign manager, Ed Rollins.

Florida Republican operatives tell NBC that Bachmann missed an opportunity here. They point to her decision not to devote resources to the Florida straw poll – which meant that her campaign could not address delegates Saturday morning.

"With Perry's poor performance at the debate, this would have been an incredible opportunity for her to come out and really reestablish herself," says Sarasota County GOP chairman Joe Gruters. "But without her being here, you know there's nothing she can do."

Bachmann participated in two days of Florida GOP events this week, including Thursday's FOX/Google debate, but left the state after her speech Friday morning to CPAC.

During a visit to a Tampa suburb in late August, Bachmann told reporters that the crowded debate schedule during the run-up to Florida’s straw poll prevented her from committing to the event. “We have a number of places that we need to be, and to meaningfully participate in the straw poll we would have to be just exclusively in Florida all the time,” she said.

It was the first straw poll held in the Sunshine State since 1995.

None were held during the 2000 or 2008 campaign cycles – due largely to the fact that candidates did not want to shift time and resources to the large and expensive state of Florida.

Candidates vying for the White House in 2012 spent this week talking about the important role Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, will play in the general election, but few mentioned the straw poll itself.

Cain, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were the only candidates to address the delegates inside the Orange County Convention Center today, and Bachmann and Romney did not so much as send surrogates to address straw poll voters.

Still, Florida Republican voters got multiple chances to see the candidates this week as part of the Presidency 5 events. Between Thursday's Faith and Freedom Coalition Rally and Fox News debate, plus the Conservative Political Action Conference's road trip to Orlando on Friday, all the candidates were campaigning in the state.

Straw poll votes were tallied from Republicans from all of the state's 67 counties. Floridians who wanted to participate needed to apply to be delegates, then get chosen through a lottery.

The three straw polls held before this in Florida have all picked the eventual primary winner. Ronald Reagan was the first winner in 1979, followed by George H.W. Bush in 1987 and then Bob Dole in 1995.

“If Florida tradition holds, this could be the launching pad of a big twist,” said Brian Hughes, communications director for the Republican Party of Florida.

The full results are below

Today at the Republican Party of Florida’s Presidency 5, 2,657 delegates cast their votes in the party’s straw poll. The results are as follows:

1. Herman Cain, 37.1%
2. Rick Perry, 15.4%
3. Mitt Romney, 14.0%
4. Rick Santorum, 10.9%
5. Ron Paul, 10.4%
6. Newt Gingrich, 8.4%
7. Jon Huntsman, 2.3%
8. Michele Bachmann, 1.5%                        

**UPDATE**

The Bachmann campaign released this statement on the Presidency 5 Florida straw poll:

"Florida is an important state in the presidential race, but we chose not to participate in the P5 Poll which is open to select delegates.  We got into the presidential race late and dedicated our resources to the Iowa straw poll which is open to all Iowans with a valid ID; Michele won the Iowa poll with less time and money than the other candidates in the race."