Reagan inspired democrats with the truth of his message- he definately ran as a conservative and reached out to the conservatives. He was not ignoring the conservatives while reaching for democrats. McCain ignored conservatives, he thought they would vote for him because they would have no other choice. He may have had a clue when his campaign was lagging with no momentum and picked Sarah to reach the conservatives. That was good- but he muzzled her because he was still aiming for dims. I think he thought he could win without conservatives- that didn’t work out too well for him in the end.
We don’t need a candidate that will appeal to dims, we need a conservative candidate that can reach conservatives with a good strong message, others will be drawn to the message by communication and leadership. That person will appeal to many others because of the message so will gather independents and even some democrats. That is the Reagan method and it worked, but many don’t to this day understand how he did it.
We can’t keep running to the left to try to gather their voters while losing our own. It simply doesn’t work.
One thing is for sure, I’ll never, ever force myself to hold my nose and vote for anyone who does not represent what the party is supposed to stand for again.
How McCain even got in as the Republican candidate in the first place still bothers me, and it means there is a lot to clean up with the party admin itself. No way should a rino ever have been voted in.
Certain conservative candidates will inspire independents and democrats much more than others—even though they have the same conservative ideology. If we want to win, it is those candidates that we should support.