Posted on 12/11/2006 11:06:46 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez
Our view: In Arizona and nationwide, voters rejected rigid ideologues in favor of those who promised moderation, dialogue.
The picture that emerged from last month's elections, at both the state and the federal level, showed a majority of voters weary of hard-line, intransigent ideologues on the far right.
We know that, because voters turned both houses of Congress over to the Democrats and for the first time in many years gave Democrats 27 of the 60 seats seats in the Arizona House of Representatives.
They also re-elected Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, giving her a 27 percentage point victory over her ultra-conservative challenger, Republican Len Munsil.
And so there is some irony, to put it kindly, in the comments from some Republicans who believe the party suffered because its candidates were not conservative enough. That line of thinking suggests that what voters really wanted were tougher, more rigid conservatives. If that were true, then candidates like Republican Randy Graf, an aggressive conservative who was running for Congress in District 8, should have trounced his Democratic opponent, Gabrielle Giffords. But the opposite happened. Voters told Graf to take a hike and sent Giffords to Washington.
It is remarkable, then, to hear Republicans like Bill Montgomery, who did so poorly in his race against Attorney General Terry Goddard, declare: "The Republican Party took a hit because we strayed from the principles that make our party so strong and that serve to unify our membership, which consists predominantly of fiscal and social conservatives."
This is the same as saying Republican conservatives should stick to the principles that made them unpopular and that voters, for the most part, rejected.
Montgomery was quoted by reporter Daniel Scarpinato in a Star story last Wednesday. We are more inclined to agree with Steve Huffman, a Republican moderate who ran a primary against Graf and lost.
"I think the most important conversation we have to have right now is: 'Are we where the voters are?' " Huffman said.
It's an important, practical question that suggests that candidates should be responsive to voters' concerns. It makes perfect sense, and if other Republicans were to accept reality they would see that there was nothing mysterious about the election results. Voters rejected the fringes and moved toward the political center. The Republicans in District 8 who rejected Huffman didn't get it.
Many of them would undoubtedly agree with Montgomery, a political novice, who told Scarpinato, "I've always had a problem with the term 'moderate.' If you always take the middle ground, I don't see how that's a virtue. That's not leadership."
On the contrary, we would say that it is both a sign of leadership and a necessary asset to realize the wisdom in compromising on 10 or 20 percent of the issues in order to achieve success on 80 percent of the others.
Compromise is not a dirty word, nor is it fatal to try to understand another viewpoint in the hope of negotiating an issue that gives both sides some of what they're seeking. A case can be made that compromise is a sign of wisdom and maturity.
The point that hard-liners like Montgomery miss is that public service does not require rigid adherence to a personal ideological agenda. It requires an ability to remain flexible enough to respond to the people who elected you as their representative, not their emperor.
Failure to accept the fundamental message of the last election will eventually dilute Republican power at the state level as sure as it has at the national level. Voters want a change, not a restatement of the same old manifesto.
I expect the dems to go soft on terrorism in an attempt to gain 'global' respect (Kerry-ize). This will get a lot of Americans killed, thereby uniting the people (well, those that aren't dead, anyway) in an effort to rid muslimism from our shores (mountains, valleys, deserts, etc.)
TANCREDO/BUCHANAN, THE DREAM TEAM.
The Arizona Daily star is the one who does not "get it".
The citizens voted for DINOs over RINOs.
Conservative principles did win out.
We also had the stay at home useful idiots who thought, wrongly, that teaching a lesson would somehow mean pelosi would stop being a communist.
The bottom line is that the GOP leadership thought a useless flag burning amendment vote would be a way to pacify conservatives or a limp wristed effort to pass the federal marriage amendment that voters DO want.
Democrat Party newly elected have promissed to do in 100 HOURS what Clinton tried to do in his first 100 days.
the Democrats know this and that is why they sacrificed the homosexuals that were with them in order to advance.
:-) How about Ron Paul for Sec of Defense and Pam Anderson for Secretary of State...or maybe a pop tart like Brittany Spears...
Hardly, unless you consider RINOs to be the opposite of Democrats politically, which they are not.
Yes sir.
People know that the economy is good, and they know that the war is not as good as they hoped it would be.
No, people don't know the truth about the economy and that shows in the disapproval numbers we see about Bush's handling of the economy and also their sense of the direction of the country being over-whelmingly negative and also the fact that so many indicate in polling that the economy is a mess. There is a total disconnect when it comes to the actual state of the economy and the public sentiment around our domestic state as we see expressed in polling. And the long and short of that is the news media reports nothing but the negative aspects of the economy like gas prices and the cost of tuition. That's all we hear reported on the economy.
And if being truthful in saying that we have a totally co-opted and agendized media and this is why people have turned against the war, the economy and Republicans means we'll have a DNC run government then so be it. America is sinking into a morass of its own stupidity and they deserve the crap ass government they'll get if they continue to put Democrats into power. I'm not going to sit here and deny that the real problem isn't the massive propaganda machine that brainwashes Americans into believing everything is a disaster when Republicans are running things and the world is glorious when Dems. are in charge. And I'm not going to instead sit here and say "Well, we should just retreat from Iraq because Americans are too stinking immature and soaked in a instant gratification mindset and if war isn't a bed of roses they lose patience and want us to flee and well we should just give them what we want because it's more important to win elections than to lose wars to Al Qaeda."
Sorry, if this is what it takes to win in today's America then I don't really care to have our party in charge. They deserve what's coming their way. But I'm not about to see us sacrifice what's important as a party and a conservative movement to please a bunch of deceived, ignorant cranks who are so busy watching "Desperate Housewives" and "Fear Factor" and worrying about Tom and Katie and Brangelina to get informed about what really is going on in the world and rely on Katie Couric to interpret the world for them.
Not on those things, no. And I never said Republicans aren't conservative. Nor am I some unquestioning fan of Reagan though I did like him.
I did say that if only Republicans were the "right wing" ideologues this dope who writes this article thinks they are. We would have gotten tax cuts extended, lower spending, drilling in ANWR, a determined caucus wanting to get Social Security private accounts, etc. The fact that we couldn't get these conservative ideas passed in a Republican Congress tells me far from having an ideological Congress under Republicans we had one that didn't have the courage of its so-called convictions.
What a stinking pile! I have heard "in order for the GOP to win, they must act like democrats" for years now. The GOP lost every single voting group because they were scandal ridden, acted in a self serving way, acted like liberals, and ran one of the worst campaigns in years.
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It was not the economy and It Was Not IRAQ.
As for your claim that "it was not Iraq," I must strenuously disagree.
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It's not a matter of debate. The exit polls showed what they showed. It's data. You can't disagree with data. You can disagree with interpretation of it, but not data -- unless you want to declare that the experiment was wrong, and there's no evidence that it was. I made no interpretation of the data. It said the exit polls showed that the number one issue of the voters was corruption. There's nothing more to be discussed about that.
There a couple of reasons no one wants to embrace the reality that this was about corruption and NOTHING else.
1) If you do that within the MSM, then hundreds or thousands of columnists have essentially no material with which to fill columns, hit their deadlines and get paid. Corruption as the primary issue says NOTHING at all about ideological shift in any direction by the electorate. Pundits hate that. It means the liberals persuaded no one. It means there is no change of anyone's opinion.
2) Conservatives want to say that the Democrats are loaded with corruption, too. Well, saying it is not enough. You have to have indictable evidence. Not mere indications. You have to have clear, outright grand jury indictments. Anything less is not evidence of corruption. So get to work looking, get it found and get it to prosecutors, either directly or otherwise (through media).
We will win back some "natural" GOP seats in 2008 being caretaken by Democrats (Delay's seat and Foley's seat), and we can win back a few more by hitting the local press in districts where Democrats pretended to be conservative and distributing to those districts every single vote their candidate casts for liberals (starting with the vote for Speaker), but to win enough seats back to reflip there are going to have to be grand jury indictments that are used to taint the entire Democratic party. Those won't happen unless we find evidence that prosecutors can work with.
Considering that Bennett is a Catholic, and that Catholics are not noted for a puritan attitude toward gambling - and that Bennett is not on the public dole or breaking up his family, what exactly is his "problem" that we should take note of? That he's not a Methodist?
I am glad you agree. We can spend the next couple of years running in circles arguing between moderates and conservatives, or we can figure out how to defeat this latest, and unfortaunately pretty smart) strategy. I vote for the latter.
I agree that Republicans shouldn't act like Democrats to win. I live near Chicago. The republcian nominee for IL gov. was as liberal as many Democrats, and she still lost, 49%-40%, with 11% voting for the Green Party candidate.
J.D. Hayworth (AZ) - ACU rating 98 Lost to Harry Mitchell by a small margin in a majority dem district. Mitchell runs hard right on illegal immigration with an eye toward more social spending on education, medicare and social security while trumpeting fiscal conservatism. :-} He favors funding ESR as well. More spending by the fed.
Richard Pombo (CA) - ACU rating 97 Loses to Jerry McNerney 53-47. McNerney runs on the environment, aginst the Iraq war and by tying Pombo to Abramhof.
Chris Chocola (IN) - ACU rating 95 Chocola loses to Joe Donnelly a social conservative who runs against CAFTA/NAFTA.
Gil Gutknecht (MN) - ACU rating 94 Loses to Wlatz, a knowledgeable candidate who runs against the Iraq war but the probable issue that lost it for Gutknecht was a local issue have ing to do with the DM&E railroad and coal.
Charles Taylor (NC) - ACU rating 92 Loses to Heath Schuler a social conservative. Issues? Iraq, CAFTA/NAFTA and corruption.
Mike Sodrel (IN) - ACU rating 92 Loses to Baron Hill who formerly held the seat 49-46. Hill, a social conservaitve, runs on Iraq, health care and get this, "Change". On a side note, he returned a $1000 donation from John Kerry.
Melissa Hart (PA) - ACU rating 91 Loses to Jason Altmire, a social moderate but big gun guy in a majority dem district. Altmire ties Bush and Santorum to Hart and runs against illegal immigration. This one broke my heart, so to speak.
No evidence thus far supporting your or the authors thesis.
More later if you wish.
Exceptional point
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