Does that still hold in 2007 though a lot of water has gone under the bridge since those days.
Why bring Ted Kennedy into the discussion?
Conservative ideas sell because they make sense. People understand them on an instinctual level because they are reality based.
Ronald Reagan had a talent for skewering liberal appeals to emotion with concise eloquence. He reduced liberal sound-bites to their basic pablum and exposed liberals as whining liars.
Republican candidates who actually believe in conservative ideas and can articulate them concisesly whithout long, rambling setups are very attractive to the public.
Fleeing the political battlefield or mimicking the enemy is what loses national elections. It reinforces liberal lies when Republicans appear to accept them, (usually in the interest of avoiding the wrath of the Democrat Media). Besides, why vote for Democrat Lite when you can have the real thing?