Medved uses the election of the two Bush’s to prove his point.
He fails to recognize that Bush the elder (George H.W. Bush) may have won in 1988, when he did run as a conservative, but he lost in 1992 after he had failed to govern as one.
With respect to Bush Junior (George W. Bush) he did run as a somewhat wishy washy “compassionate conservative” in 2000 and he lost the popular vote to a very weak candidate and only won office because of the Electoral College. Had Ralph Nader not run under the Green Party flag, and siphoned a few thousand liberal votes from Gore, Gore would have beaten Bush in Florida and won the Electoral College as well as the popular vote. He almost lost his reelection bid in 2004 and likely would have lost if he hadn’t been lucky enough to face the patrician “no personality” John Kerry. The truth is the younger Bush was a moderate and his “compassionate conservatism” neither played well with real conservatives nor the moderates the GOP elites love to embrace.
Great points. Both those elections should have been shoe ins for GWB against those candidates. It is evidence as his weakness as a candidate they came so close.
Medved also makes the following points:
* When outspoken conservatives such as Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Perry failed to win enough backing to prevail with the Republican base in 2012, why would it make sense to expect them to do better with independents and moderates?
* In crucial, statewide races in 2010 and 2012, uncompromising conservatives like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Ken Buck in Colorado, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri won GOP nominations but lost badly in otherwise highly winnable Senate contests. Their experience illustrates the fallacy that stalwart conservatives always make the best candidates—if only Republican voters would be smart enough to nominate them.