At the end of January, the Republican National Committee chooses its new chairman — and, until the 2012 primaries get started (sometime next month), the new public face of the GOP.

Unfortunately, most of the candidates seem to think the GOP has a technology problem. As opposed to an everything problem. I disagree, in the Post this morning:

If the GOP has a youth problem, the answer isn’t to Twitter them about how awesome Ronald Reagan and assault weapons are. (Or to post a picture on Facebook of Ronald Reagan firing an assault weapon - no matter how cool that might sound.)

And the GOP does have a youth problem, among other problems. Obama won 18-to-29- year-olds by a 34-point margin - and did even better among minority youth voters.

The GOP also faces a 36-point gap with Latino voters, plus a nearly 100 percent chasm with black voters.

There’s also the GOP’s loss of the interior West, when it’s already been shut out of the Northeast and the Pacific Coast. And the mirror-image problem of the GOP’s captivity by the South - where John McCain picked up 113 of his 173 electoral votes.

There’s the GOP’s 50-point gap among the growing ranks of the nonreligious (12 percent of the electorate, according to 2008 exit polls). There’s the 30-plus-point gap with urban voters. The GOP’s weakening in the suburbs.

Which candidate can start the process of working through these problems?

Spoiler alert: The best of the available candidates is Maryland’s Michael Steele. (How could I not go with Chip “Magic Negro” Saltsman? Right?)

Peter Berkowitz has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal arguing that the old fusionist coalition I wrote about in The Elephant in the Room is as viable as ever.

I wish I shared his optimism.