“Somehow the conservative majority of the GOP has to find and back several truly conservative candidates for the 2012 primaries who can attract both GOP primary voters and general election voters in November, including a large segment of the middle ground independents. If we don’t, as a close observer of national politics for the past 50-plus years I predict that the GOP will become stuck in the position of being the perpetual minority party within the next two election cycles”
Take a moment to reconsider the conondrum you have described in the above paragraph.
John McCain stands a fighting chance of beating both Obama and Hillary precisely because he has the power to attract [in your very words] “a large segment of the middle ground independents”. And he attracts those “independents” because they are, by nature, wishy-washy people unable to make up their minds or take a stand. They are the “waving wheat” voters of America, bending to and fro from one election to the next, driven by the the prevailing “political winds”.
Again, using your very words, “truly conservative candidates” would have scared away the “waving wheats”, particulary as the media tries to whip up the winds of change for “the first black president” or “the first woman president”. At least in this election cycle. as “the Republican brand”, per se, is going to be a difficult sell this November. Our prospects for Congress - not very good - should give pause for thought insofar as that goes.
Even though I don’t care for him myself, Mr. McCain is poised to be a better pitchman for that brand than the other guys would have been (I voted for Romney in my state’s primary, though I would rather have supported Tom Tancredo, or Fred Thompson). In hindsight, I should have recognized Romney as a loser - like it or not, his being Mormon will probably forever deny him presidential office. The country truly ain’t ready for that just yet. (Aside, are we ready for an Islamic president? If it’s not improper to ask that, are we ready for a black one?)
You’re right about the GOP: they acted like they were the “minority party” even when they were the MAJORITY one! Perhaps someday they’ll learn, but I doubt I’ll live to see it.
And you’re also right that the time is NOW to start looking for “conserative timber” for 2012. But I ask: who is there? And, of “who there is”, which of them can be persuaded to give it a shot? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Jim Robinson opened this thread. If you’re reading, Jim, I’ll ask directly:
Look around you (out in Fresno). How does the place look today, vis-a-vis how it looked thirty years ago? Vis-a-vis FIFTEEN years ago? I think you’d have to say that things look pretty different. What has changed are not only the faces around you, but the faces of demographics and political reality.
And it’s changing many other places, too. The United States of America that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980, DOESN’T EXIST ANY MORE. It has changed that much, and with those changes, have come a new political environment.
John McCain is not causing those changes.
The reason he is the Republican nominee this year, is BECAUSE OF those changes.
We had better learn to adapt to them. Or, as epow asserts, we are doomed to become the perpetual minority party.
- John
OK, so now we have to forget about ever having another real conservative as president?
I can't accept that. I believe it is entirely possible, even likely, that a real conservative can win if he is the right man for the time as Reagan was for his. I realize that RR was elected twice by landslides not necessarily because of his conservatism, but probably as much because of his appealing personality, his enthusiastic and contagious optimism for America's future, and his All-American appeal to millions of patriotic Americans of all political persuasions. But I can't believe that he was a once in a lifetime aberration, there are bound to be conservatives today in the political and/or public realm in some significant capacity who have enough of those same characteristics to inspire a similar kind of response, although perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, from the majority of today's Americans who are not way out on either end of the spectrum and are dissatisfied with what both parties continue to offer them.
IOW, I suppose what I'm trying to say and using too many words to say is that I believe that a great many, if not most, voters are more attracted or repelled by the personal characteristics and telegenic qualities of a candidate than they are by his or her niche on the political spectrum as long as that niche isn't too awfully far out on either side of center. This time the Democrats seem to have found that candidate in Obama, except for his niche on the far left side of the spectrum that most voters are not fully aware of yet and which if the media can help it they won't be aware of until after he takes office. They also had it in Bill Clinton, JFK, RFK, (if he had lived) and later on possibly evan John Junior,(if he had lived) but it doesn't always have to be the Dems who get lucky.
The GOP leadership needs to be beating the bushes looking for a personally attractive Republican man or woman with leadership experience who projects an upbeat enthusiasm for America's future and is also reasonably conservative. But instead, the clique of wealthy, influential, country club centrist type GOP leaders such as those who make up Christy Todd Whitman's multiple inner circle groups and organizations must spend their time and effort between elections identifying just another blah, unappealing, centrist dullard like Gerald Ford or Bob Dole to promote and support, and apparently the closest they could come to their ideal this time was McCain.
Of course that would be the same McCain who is our presumptive nominee, this current cycle's unappealing, septuagenarian, centrist dullard who has probably stabbed more conservative backs than any other living high level officeholder who has an inappropriate R tacked onto his name.