John Avlon notes Pope Francis “hasn’t been afraid to challenge the entrenched interests that have sullied his church’s perception. His style of reaching out is just what might save the Republican Party.”

“Much of the modern Republican Party is seems content preaching to a smaller and smaller choir. They seem, unfairly or not, more concerned with the head than the heart. Absolute faith in the power of tax cuts takes the place of alternative plans to alleviate poverty or expand the ranks of the middle class. This is not just a problem with communication; it is a problem with policy content that appeals outside the base.”

As an example, the AP notes Francis “is reaching out to gays, saying he won’t judge priests for their sexual orientation, in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returns from his first foreign trip.”

Said Francis: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Byron York: “It’s more likely that this is just a rocky time for a rejected and confused party. The conflicts inside the GOP today just don’t line up in the configuration of a classic civil war. There are multiple issues involved, and the lawmakers on various sides of various issues don’t lean the same way on each issue. Republicans who are opponents on one issue are allies on another. Looking at the Senate, for example, it’s unlikely that there will be a total civil war between Senate Faction A and Senate Faction B when some members of the opposing factions are united in Faction C, or Faction D, or so on. In other words, it may be that the Republican party is too divided to have a real civil war. Perhaps chaos would be a better description. We’ll know more later.”

Ross Douthat says many Americans may agree with the GOP’s critique of President Obama but still reject the Republican alternative for two key reasons.

“First, while Republicans claim to oppose the ruling class on behalf of the country as a whole, they often seem to be representing an equally narrow set of interest groups — mostly elderly, rural… and well-off. A party that cuts food stamps while voting for farm subsidies or fixates on upper-bracket tax cuts while wages are stagnating isn’t actually offering a libertarian populist alternative to the court party’s corrupt bargains. It’s just offering a different, more Republican-friendly set of buy-offs.”

“Second, as much as Americans may distrust a cronyist liberalism, they prefer it to a conservatism that doesn’t seem interested in governing at all. This explains why Republicans could win the battle for public opinion on President Obama’s first-term agenda without persuading the public to actually vote him out of office. The sense that Obama was at least trying to solve problems, whereas the right offered only opposition, was powerful enough to overcome disappointment with the actual results.”