In other words, by sticking to our convictions, conservatives suffered a short term loss and won a long term gain.
In 1968, conservatives supported moderate Republican Richard Nixon. Nixon ended up with the Watergate scandal and dragged the Republican Party down to near extinction in 1974.
In other words, by supporting a moderate, conservatives enjoyed a short-term gain and suffered a long-term loss.
In 1976, moderate Republican President Gerald Ford enjoyed record spending deficits and declared, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe." Conservatives sat the election out. Ford lost, and Jimmy Carter became President. The result was that by 1980, the American people had enough, and Ronald Reagan -- a man that moderate Republicans had insisted, loud and long, was unelectable, was elected in 1980.
Reagan made one mistake, however. He chose a moderate Republican as his Vice Presidential running mate -- George Bush. In 1988, Bush won the presidency on Reagan's coattails and promptly disassembled the conservative revolution with massive spending and tax increases. By 1992, we ended up with Bill Clinton.
However, by 1994, the American people had enough of Democrat domination of the federal government, and Republicans won control of the US Congress for the first time in decades.
In 1996, the Republicans nominated Bob Dole, a moderate Republican, whose lack-luster campaign somehow got Bill Clinton re-elected -- in fact, made Clinton seem presidential, a task which Clinton alone had not been able to accomplish.
All in all, the record is quite clear: if conservatives sacrifice principle to support a moderate Republican, the moderate Republican will move even farther to the Left, and when his liberal policies come acropper, Republicans will be blamed and hurt badly.
We're in that mode right now. I suggest that it is time for a correction. Conservatives should sit this election out, and let a Democratic President take the fall for the same leftist policies that Bush wishes to implement. Then we can win back the White House in 2008.
Funny. I hear so many Californians complain about the government's refusal to stop the trespassing at the border, that I had come to see it as a "sensitive issue to American citizens". But what could I know, seeing as I don't see the wisdom of having the southwest converted into a multilingual multicultural third world barrio. Maybe Karl Rove can explain it, in espanol.