GOP Base Rejects Calls to Moderate

politico.com ^ | April 26, 2009 | Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin

[kellynla]

A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues.

There was Sen. John McCain's daughter and his campaign manager who last week demanded that their fellow Republicans embrace same-sex marriage. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – the most devoted modernizer among the party's 2012 hopefuls – won approving words from New York Times columnist Frank Rich for his call to downplay divisive values issues. The party’s top elected leaders in Congress, meanwhile, spooked by being attacked as the “party of no,” were recasting themselves as a constructive, respectful opposition to a popular president.

But outside Washington, the reality is very different. Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.

"There is a sense of rebellion brewing," said Katon Dawson, the outgoing South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who cited unexpectedly high attendance at anti-tax “tea parties” last week.

[fr_freak]

I’ve always taken the word “moderate” to mean “moral coward”. Take the issue of abortion, for example. One either believes that it is wrong and is murder, or one believes that it is just dandy. There is no moderate position. Anyone who says he is “moderate” simply doesn’t have the guts to choose a side. Pretty much all issues are that way.

[dfwgator]

World’s Shortest Book: “Great Moderates in History”

[Ol' Sparky]

If the GOP abandons social issues, there is no chance to regain a majority unless the base rises up and eliminates the RINOs that are abandoning such issues in the primary. Once again, those running the GOP are absolutely clueless.

[Aquinasfan]

Where have all the passionate moderates gone?

[melsec]

I think not playing to their base and rejecting the moral side of conservatism is what lost them the election to begin with - that and McCains inablilty to attack Obama and the Dems. on the facts of the economic crisis.

I have said it before and I am even more sure now that a conservative party that is only conservative fiscally and not morally and spiritually is seen as greedy capitalism by the people. There are so many clever and politically vital people here on this forum - I would love to see some of you run for office of some sort! Maybe as independants or take back the GOP for yourselves.

Mel

[TADSLOS]

Where have all the passionate moderates gone?

They're off twittering about.

[Aquinasfan]

And take that vapid daughter along with ya.

You haven't lived until you've heard Laura Ingrahm's impersonation of the valley girl.

[LibLieSlayer]

:-)!

LLS

[VRWCer]

If the GOP ever wants to enjoy a groundswell of support again, they need to understand, and never deviate from, this principle:

The vast majority of “Republicans” want a leader who is unabashedly, unashamedly ***Conservative*** - pro life, pro small government, pro traditional marriage, fiscally conservative, pro military, pro defense, pro 2nd amendment, pro free speech, anti immigration, **pro America**, who has a ***giant pair of steel gonads***, and who does not back down or bow down to ANYONE. EVER.

Find someone like that and you will find your next Republican president, guaranteed. Find a whole lot of somebody’s like that, and you will have full control of the Congress, and a country which flourishes again in the manner intended by the ones who founded it. I’m just sayin... Pay attention or be relegated to the backseat for as long as they refuse to listen.

On a side note, perhaps a better name for a third party, rather than the Conservative party, would be the Patriot party. The MSM has beaten us over the head with “Conservative” as if it were a four letter word or a hate crime, but there really isn’t anything they can do with Patriot that doesn’t sound anti-American and make them look like what they are. Again, just sayin...

[don-o]

We need more conservativsm - like the last two R administrations....

??????

uh, never mind

sorry for the brain lock there

[Oldpuppymax]

“Moderate?” As in, surrender to the left. You’re damned right we refuse!

[DTogo]

Screw the GOP, time for a new truly Conservative third party.

The GOP can then get on board and take orders, or admit they're really Donkeys in disguise.

[AKA Elena]

If the moderate wing (or winglet) is not quelled and quieted; if it becomes the new face of the party ... I will not be alone in finding another political home and will work my best to establish strength and loyalty to the concepts and beliefs which drew me to this party in the first place.

I have always followed the party "line" as spoken so eloquently by Alan Keyes, who earned scorn from the party for his two encouraged, but not supported runs for the Senate at the behest of the Republican party, and then not having support from them and his admonishment to watch "the devil in front of us" in relation to the use of the petri dish babies for experimentation.

Well, say what you will, but hundredsa and hundreds of us here voted for him in our own interior poll and he won handily back before the 1992 run-ups to election.

He still speaks for me and I am intelligent enough to follow his speeches and understand them ... just as so many of us did those many years ago. It did come to pass that the permission to use those "already in use" embryos came to pass, through the permission of President Bush, to whom I have remained faithful.

I find it impossible to think of any other person, besides Ambassador Keyes, to speak clearly and suggest to all ... the clear, correct and wise paths to follow in almost all things which clarify the real Republican beliefs.

I do not want to fight a battle over Dr. Keyes ... this is my opinion ... I remember his power and acknowledge that he has been overused and abused to the point of ineffectiveness, perhaps. I do want his voice to be heard by those of us who are disenfranchised and betrayed by the powers that are running the party today. I want those who are giving in to the amorality of the "PC" crowd to remember and listen too.

What I want is that direction re-established with his clarity and think even those who are so negative about him would have to listen and follow his direction to return to the GOOD and actually Godly platform of the Republicans

When I read the occasional posting of his words -- too many say he speaks 'over their heads', if they are not excorciating him for some reason ... Have we ourselves been dumbed down?

Sarah Palin is my choice for the future, but i wish the other besmirched, but correct voice of Dr. Keyes, would join with hers.

[2001convSVT]

Like you I am not laughing any longer, if a third party candidate express TRUE Conservative values and is the best then he or she has my vote.

[KYGrandma]

I told the GOP rep who called me asking for money the same thing. I am a conservative, no longer Republican. And will not give them any more money. Then I hung up on him.

[ODDITHER]

McCain chose to be a closet Democrat for 8 years giving up everything he should have supported as a Republican except for te pro life issues. Along came Sara a real conservative that talked straight without all these code words like my friend across the aisle.
McCain in a sense has a right to be angry at New York Times and all the liberal news stories that held him up as the poster boy of what a good Republican looks like and then through him back when the O started running.

Had he been true to his beliefs instead a facade of “bipartisan ship” he would be Presdident today.

[AKA Elena]

Talk about time flying -- Free Republic chose Alan Keyes as the candidate who most represented of the majority of our views back before the 2000 elections -- in 1992, FR was but a gleam in JR's eye!

[Darren McCarty]

We had eight years of moderation. His name is Bush. While Bush was good when it came to life issues, and slightly to the right of me on the gay issues, he was a liberal on fiscal issues outside of tax cuts. I supported tax cuts, but only with spending decreases. The anger at Washington right now is because of spending. Now the "moderate" GOP wants to spend more? Go to hell, guys.

Right now we need to focus on less government, less government, and less government, in that order.

[bushfamfan]

There is no reason for conservatives to stay in the Republican party. It’s a party on self-destruct controlled by spineless nitwits who sacrificed our country. There’s no going back and I don’t see the reason to continue to allow the tyrants in charge now to go unchallenged as the fool enablers in the GOP continue to let this spiral out of control. It is up to conservatives to find alternatives now.

[dsc]

“Screw the GOP, time for a new truly Conservative third party.”

Dern right.