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.
Regards, Ivan
Look over post #52 and explain it to me.
Anyone who considered Bill Bennett to be "symptomatic of the whole party's moral compass" was a fool.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Republicans in Connecticut did.
Bennett was born in Brooklyn but later moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended Gonzaga College High School. He graduated from Williams College and went on to get a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in Political Philosophy. He also has a law degree from Harvard Law School.
From 1976 to 1981, he was the executive director of the National Humanities Center, a private research facility in North Carolina. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he served until Reagan appointed him Secretary of Education in 1985. Bennett resigned from this post in 1988 and, later that year, was appointed to the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by President Bush. He was confirmed by the Senate in a 97-2 vote.
He was co-director of Empower America and was a Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Long active in United States Republican Party politics, he is now an author, speaker, and, since April 5, 2004, the host of the weekday radio program Morning in America on the Dallas, Texas-based Salem Communications. In addition to his radio show, he is the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute.
Bennett and his wife, Elayne, have two sons, John and Joseph. His wife Elayne is the President and Founder of Best Friends Foundation,a nationwide abstinence-based program for adolescents. He is the brother of prominent Washington attorney Robert S. Bennett.
Tell you what, why don't you look over post #56 and give a coherent response ? You've already been refuted all over this thread, have some dignity and don't turn into another FairOpinion troll.
I guess those conservative ratings in the 90's didn't mean much.
This article isn't even close to what these elections were about....geez!
Nailed it, particularly about Rahm's "Blue Dog" strategy (giving an alternative to people who otherwise wouldn't dream of voting for Dems or not bothering to vote at all).
He didn't stay fairly clean. If you really were aware of what the American people were "feeling" coming up to the election, you would know that Bush was unfairly tarred with the culture of corruption crap -- Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson/Scooter Libby baloney for three long and solid years. He was painted with the corruption brush quite heavily. The Late Night jokes and hits went on year after year. They have an effect.
Blame many of the damn election losses on the anti-American media.
The socialist/Marxist/liberal media is the most destructive, relentless, and ruthless enemy of this Republic.
****
Chafee's ACU rating was a 12, identical to Hillary Clinton's.
If you take a look at the bulk of those names, many were either troubled incumbents or ran away from Conservatism. One of those on there lost because he choked his mistress in a hotel room. Again, the Republican party lost, Conservatism did not.
"The socialist/Marxist/liberal media is the most destructive, relentless, and ruthless enemy of this Republic."
Don't forget the liberal RINO tools, of whom some are on blatant display on this website, trying to make the Republican party another appendage of that evil machine.
well said (imo)
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Seven of the eight vacated seats in the House had ACU ratings of 70 and above and went to Democrats.
No Democrat incumbent lost their seat.
Five of the six Senate seats lost had ACU ratings of 80 and above.
I have not been refuted, conservatism lost.
Your problem just may be that you don't know what a conservative is.
I guess neither does the American Conservative Union.
I appreciate your points and your list of Republicans who lost, but I don't think it's fair to use this particular election to say only moderates can win future elections. I think it's fairly safe to say this election showed it is very difficult for any party to control Congress for both terms of a two-term president. Historically, the majority party loses just like the Republicans did this mid-term election. What it does prove, IMO, is the majority party must do something really significant to keep the majority all eight years. Given a long-term war the likes of the Cold War, a do-nothing Congress, an MSM cheerleading for the Democrats, RINOs stabbing the party in the back, a president stiff-arming his base in support of amnesty and "big government conservatism (?!?!?)" it's little wonder we couldn't hold onto the majority.
Anyone who considered Bill Bennett to be "symptomatic of the whole party's moral compass" was a fool.
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