“To a large extent, winning a general election means turning out your own supporters”
I wonder if this is really true. . . in this election cycle. Somehow I think we need more than just our own supporters to win this one. I like Santorum as much as I don’t like Newt. Better than any candidate running in terms of alignment with my own principles and politics. My worry is that the chances are dim that the dumbed down american electorate will click with him. Most certainly Newt has less than that chance.
Your analysis make perfect sense to me, but I just don’t see it played out in this culture of uneducated voters.
I think we agree more than we disagree.
Winning elections at the federal level or local/state races with well-known high-profile candidates requires two things: Turning out your own supporters and convincing undecideds and opponents to vote for you instead of your opponent.
A key problem is that if candidates do not excite and motivate their base supporters, they can't win even if they might be more “palatable” to moderates. The reality is there are lots of strongly conservative people who are considerably less committed to voting than they are to conservative principles. Within the modern Republican coalition, that's an especially serious problem with evangelical voters. Democrats have the same problem with ethnic minority voters, but by nominating Barack Obama, they turned out huge numbers of voters from a constituency that was virtually certain to vote for Obama.
In 2008, the Democrats changed the makeup of the electorate. In 2010, the electorate changed back to a more typical makeup, except that conservative “Tea Partiers” were more willing than usual to go to the polls because of anger over what Obama was doing.
It remains to be seen what will happen in 2012, and much will depend on who the Republicans nominate. If we nominate Mitt Romney, I believe we've thrown away our chance for a decisive national victory and could easily condemn numerous congressional and state candidates to defeat.