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GOP Dilemma: Draw New Voters Without Irking Base
AP ^ | May 27, 2013 | AP, via WMAL.com

Posted on 05/27/2013 5:30:31 AM PDT by Timber Rattler

The Republican Party, having lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, confronts a dilemma that's easier to describe than to solve: How can it broaden its appeal to up-for-grabs voters without alienating its conservative base?

There's no consensus yet on how to do it. With the next election three years away, Republicans are tiptoeing around policy changes even as they size up potential candidates who range from tea party heroes to pragmatic governors in Republican- and Democratic-leaning states.

(snip)

While they circle that conundrum, Republican leaders hope for a charismatic nominee in the mold of Clinton or Ronald Reagan. They yearn for someone who can appeal to less ideological voters without prompting conservatives to feel their principles are losing primacy.

(Excerpt) Read more at pro.wmal-af.tritonflex.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: corrupt; gop; gutless; republican; rino
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The hypocritical morons running the Gutless Old Party never cease to torque me off...

Next for GOP leaders: Stopping Sarah Palin

1 posted on 05/27/2013 5:30:31 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
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To: Timber Rattler

“How can it broaden its appeal to up-for-grabs voters without alienating its conservative base? “

By sticking to the conservative principles laid out in the party platform?


2 posted on 05/27/2013 5:34:56 AM PDT by lowbridge
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To: Timber Rattler

The GOP needs to examine what is happening to the Conservative Party in Britain and take a lesson on how not to become totally irrelevant. The UKIP is on the rise, and the CP is on the run.


3 posted on 05/27/2013 5:36:27 AM PDT by txrefugee
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To: Timber Rattler
Draw new voters....

One for the GOP, three for Dems

Two for the GOP, 8 for the Dems...

What a strategy

4 posted on 05/27/2013 5:40:04 AM PDT by BRL
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To: Timber Rattler

Let’s ask the Democrats what to do. They have our best interest at heart.


5 posted on 05/27/2013 5:43:20 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: Timber Rattler

The GOP is to the Democrats as the Washington Generals are to the Harlem Globetrotters.


6 posted on 05/27/2013 5:45:06 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: lowbridge
There's some evidence that the Tea Party. Ron Paul supporters, and some religious and other true conservatives stayed home in numbers that cost the election.

The globalist-cheap labor party cannot win an election. A true constitutional-conservative party still could, but not for long with the path we're on.

7 posted on 05/27/2013 5:48:54 AM PDT by grania
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To: lowbridge
The answer, as provided by Thomas Jefferson, is to go out and find people motivated to vote for your candidates ~ get them to the polls.

This takes place long before the nominations and campaigns.

If you wait for the campaign and go out with the most perfectly nuanced appeals to people who usually don't vote for Republicans, you will usually lose!

Jefferson's DemocratRepublican party swept the Federalists from history by following that basic plan ~ first find the voters ~ then provide them the candidates they want.

NOTE: The Federalists imagined that the best people ~ men of education, position and property would select the best people for public office. We know how that worked. The only federalist most of us know of as a federalist was Justice Marshall, the 4th Chief Justice.

DISAPPEARED

SLATE WIPED CLEAN.

The only other federalist notion remaining is that of the GOP-e's belief that you pick the candidate first, then get the voters.

With 90 million adult Americans not voting at all seems to me a little effort could find that additional 6 million voters we need to skunk the Democrats!

8 posted on 05/27/2013 5:53:32 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: grania
There is no such evidence ~ on the other hand there is evidence the old Rockefeller Republican wing of the party simply failed to deliver any new voters ~ probably for the last 30 years!
9 posted on 05/27/2013 5:55:12 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Timber Rattler

Repeal Immigration act of 1965 for starters.
Enforce existing laws against employers who hire illegals
Target and harass illegals and their sympathizers
Target and harass domestic communists in Congress and the press
Work to abolish the IRS, EPA, Departments of Education and Energy
Target and harass homosexuals and their sympathizers in the media
Disenfranchise any voter receiving federal assistance


10 posted on 05/27/2013 6:04:20 AM PDT by Rome2000 (THE WASHINGTONIANS AND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE ARE THE ENEMY -ROTATE THE CAPITAL AMONGST THE STATES)
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To: Timber Rattler

“Understand yourself and understand your opponents and in one hundred battles you will not be defeated.”

We still don’t understand the Democrats. Ask an inner city, single mother with four children if she understands George Will’s latest column. We analyze elections to death. The Democrats analyze people. Look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We view voting as an act of Self-Actualization. Democrat voters view voting as a means of meeting their Physiological needs. It doesn’t matter whether they actually are stuck in the Physiological stage, they BELIEVE they are. The Democrats con them into believing that. The Democrats understand “The Carrot And Stick” approach to politics. It isn’t eating the yummy carrot that is important. It is the PROMISE of the yummy carrot that is important. It isn’t beating someone with a stick that is important. It is the FEAR of getting beat with a stick that is important.


11 posted on 05/27/2013 6:08:47 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: Timber Rattler

The Republican Party, having lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections,

Holy crap. I didn’t know that. So we only won Bush’s first election (and barely at that) and that is it? Not that it matters though because electoral is what counts which we won 2 out of the last 6 which isn’t exactly great but better than ONE. I guess we better put up some better candidates. Santorum or Bachmann would be good for me.


12 posted on 05/27/2013 6:11:36 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Santorum-Bachmann 2016 for the future of the Country!)
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To: grania

There’s some evidence that the Tea Party. Ron Paul supporters, and some religious and other true conservatives stayed home in numbers that cost the election.

Nobody was thrilled with Romney. Not only was he an embarrassment, people actually thought he was going to win on election day by a large margin....Yieks!


13 posted on 05/27/2013 6:13:23 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Santorum-Bachmann 2016 for the future of the Country!)
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To: Timber Rattler

Its easy: stop trying to appeal to the hardcore Left and those who depend on government handouts and start winning over the working class Democrats. Stop letting the Left define the party as the party of bankers and CEOs and start educating people that everyone who works and pays their own way is a free market capitalist. Most importantly: stop defining “producers” as those who own business and start including those who do the production work too.

In short, become the party of people who pay their own way and let the Democrats be the party of those who need handouts to survive (that includes welfare recipients and limousine liberals who lobby for multi-million dollar handouts).


14 posted on 05/27/2013 6:15:50 AM PDT by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: Timber Rattler

It depends. We can reach out without pandering. Pandering just happens to be the easy way out.


15 posted on 05/27/2013 6:17:47 AM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: Timber Rattler

They could try something totally insane, like sticking to some principles, and making coherent arguments for those principles. Nah, bring in the marketing consultants.


16 posted on 05/27/2013 6:21:54 AM PDT by cdcdawg
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To: Timber Rattler

Winfield Scott in 1852 tried to court Catholics into the Whig fold but failed miserably; I think he did win his own VA though, but Franklin Pierce (from whom Barbara Pierce Bush is partially descended) swept the country. Soon there were more no Whigs, as “nativists” were furious with Scott’s effort to reach non-Whiggery elements.


17 posted on 05/27/2013 6:23:03 AM PDT by Theodore R. ("Hey, the American people must all be crazy out there!")
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To: blueunicorn6

>>We still don’t understand the Democrats. Ask an inner city, single mother with four children if she understands George Will’s latest column. We analyze elections to death. The Democrats analyze people.

Very true. And not just for the single mother. Ask the husband and father who works in a factory, and has his workload increased every year with no increase in pay if the Left or Right is helping him. He feels like a mouse caught in the middle of a battle between two bull elephants.


18 posted on 05/27/2013 6:23:56 AM PDT by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: muawiyah

If the Rockefeller Republicans were going to deliver, it would be in suburban CT, OR, WI, IA, but they fail there too.


19 posted on 05/27/2013 6:25:17 AM PDT by Theodore R. ("Hey, the American people must all be crazy out there!")
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To: grania

Romney received one million more votes than McCain did in 2008.


20 posted on 05/27/2013 6:32:13 AM PDT by kabar
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