Posted on 11/16/2008 11:35:46 AM PST by SJackson
Four years ago, in the week after the 2004 presidential election, we were working furiously to put the finishing touches on the book we co-authored, "It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America."
Our central thesis was simple: The Republican Party had been taken hostage by "social fundamentalists," the people who base their votes on such social issues as abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. Unless the GOP freed itself from their grip, we argued, it would so alienate itself from the broad center of the American electorate that it would become increasingly marginalized and find itself out of power.
At the time, this idea was roundly attacked by many who were convinced that holding on to the "base" at all costs was the way to go. A former speech writer for President Bush, Matthew Scully, who went on to work for the McCain campaign this year, called the book "airy blather" and said its argument fell somewhere between "insufferable snobbery" and "complete cluelessness." Gary Bauer suggested that the book sounded as if it came from a "Michael Moore radical." National Review said its warnings were, "at best, counterintuitive," and Ann Coulter said the book was "based on conventional wisdom that is now known to be false."
What a difference four years makes -- and the data show it.
While a host of issues were at play in this election, the primary reason John McCain lost was the substantial erosion of support from self-identified moderates compared with four years ago. In 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry held just a 9 percentage point margin among moderate voters over President Bush. This year, the spread between Barack Obama and McCain was 21 points among this group. The net difference between the two elections is a deficit of nearly 6.4 million moderate votes for the Republicans in 2008.
In seven of the nine states that switched this year from Republican to Democratic, Obama's vote total exceeded the total won by President Bush four years ago. So even if McCain had equaled the president's numbers from 2004 (and he did not), he still would have lost in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia (81 total electoral votes) -- and lost the election. McCain didn't lose those states because he failed to hold the base. He lost them because Obama broadened his base.
Nor did the Republican ticket lose because "values voters" stayed home. On the contrary, according to exit polls, such voters made up a larger proportion of the electorate this year than in 2004 -- 26 percent, up from 23 percent. Extrapolating from those data, McCain actually won more votes from self-identified white evangelical/born-again voters than Bush did four years ago -- 1.8 million more. But that was not enough to offset the loss of so many moderates.
Following the conventional wisdom of the past two presidential elections, McCain tried mightily to assuage the Republican Party's social-fundamentalist wing. His selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose social views are entirely aligned with that wing, as his running mate was clearly meant to demonstrate his commitment to that bloc. Yet while his choice did comfort those voters, it made many others uncomfortable.
Palin has many attractive qualities as a candidate. Being prepared to become president at a moment's notice was not obviously among them this year. Her selection cost the ticket support among those moderate voters who saw it as a cynical sop to social fundamentalists, reinforcing the impression that they control the party, with the party's consent.
In the wake of the Democrats' landslide victory, and despite all evidence to the contrary, many in the GOP are arguing that John McCain was defeated because the social fundamentalists wouldn't support him. They seem to be suffering from a political strain of Stockholm syndrome. They are identifying with the interests of their political captors and ignoring the views of the larger electorate. This has cost the Republican Party the votes of millions of people who don't find a willingness to acquiesce to hostage-takers a positive trait in potential leaders.
Unless the Republican Party ends its self-imposed captivity to social fundamentalists, it will spend a long time in the political wilderness. On Nov. 4, the American people very clearly rejected the politics of demonization and division. It's long past time for the GOP to do the same.
Christine Todd Whitman, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003, is co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council. Robert M. Bostock, a freelance speechwriter, was her co-author for the book "It's My Party Too." This column first appeared in the Washington Post.
—It’s all BS. “Social fundamentalist” issues were not on the table this election. McCain ignored them-—
When the GOP cannot motivate the social conservative folk, the people don’t go vote. Sarah got some folks out that wouldn’t have come out otherwise. Moderates didn’t stay home. They voted for Obama, because at least his snake oil was the genuine democratic article, not a GOP imitation.
Real attracts more than imitation. We have to offer a real option, and not an imitation democrat to win. What the article is recommending is more imitation democrat stance.
Absolutely.
And I ddon’t mind them going down. They deserve it.
But America doesn’t deserve Obama. And I don’t mean that in a good way, either.
” Nor did the Republican ticket lose because “values voters” stayed home. “
Rove said otherwise.
Veterans and the religiously observant didnt show up in as great a number as before.
http://www.texasgop.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9121&news_iv_ctrl=1403
Then there were those who didn’t show up. There were 4.1 million fewer Republicans voting this year than in 2004. Some missing Republicans had turned independent or Democratic for this election. But most simply stayed home. Ironically for a campaign that featured probably the last Vietnam veteran to run for president, 2.7 million fewer veterans voted. There were also 4.1 million fewer voters who attend religious services more than once a week. Americans aren’t suddenly going to church less; something was missing from the campaign to draw out the more religiously observant.
Notably, here is where we weakened ...
“The Obama campaign also made gains among Catholics, immigrants, churchgoers, women and young voters. “
...
I dont think Moderates want mush, they want competence and they want validation for their beliefs:
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2008/11/moderates-want-competence-not-mush.html
“Before the election I wrote that I thought that the real problem for the Republican Party would be to resolve the differences between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives.”
Actually that *IS* the issue. The problem is that Christie Whitman is not a conservative at all, but one of those mod-lib Republicans whose party has moved on.
Christie Whitman represents the Elite-Horse Set- Ripon Society WASP former elite Republican. Most of those in that crowd have migrated to full bore liberal Democratism, as evidenced by how thoroughly the hedge fundamentalists (;-) ) and trust fundamentalists (;-) ) or the tri-state northeast US have moved over to Obama. Call it the Lincoln Chaffee vote.
She wants the GOP to be that faint echo that challenges the Democrats on no fundamentals at all.
Honestly, I *wish* we could get them back, but it would have to be by hitting them over the head with “The Federalist” or having a “come to Reagan” moment for them. Diluting our principles to dishwater wont help the GOP brand but make it mud.
I would urge her to put her views in practice by trying to get elected somewhere on it, rather than by lecturing the rest of the party. Her wing of the party is represented by a few liberal country clubbers who have done nothing for the party since 1976 and are about 0.1% of the electorate. As you note, her rhetoric is divisive and counterproductive. It’s indeed BEYOND alarming that you can have a far-left candidate like Obama make enough feelers to sound more prolife than he is by RESPECTING the viewpoint more than she does. That by iteself is more than half the problem. Why can t she be more respectful and mindful of the values of others even in disagreement?
The real moderates/swing voters are much more downscale and pragmatic and we lost their vote due to Bush’s performance in Iraq and the economy and because Obama promised the moon and we didnt counteroffer or debunk his tax-cut lie. Moving off the prolife dime is probably the worst possible advice to give the GOP. That issue alone makes us competitive with a broad swath of voters not interested as much in fiscal conservatism.
“Speaking of bloodletting, it is absolutely vital that the conservative wing of the party come to a final victory over the moderates or we conservatives simply must leave the party.”
I felt that McCain victory would be vital to the nation, but hard on the GOP. I think you will find that it will be surprisingly easy to run out the moderate influence. Perhaps too easy, in that a hard-right GOP image will only cement the Democrat majority.
We will have to be principled and conservative, but also *smart*, *competent* and *listen* to the people. I go back to my “Moderates want competence, not mush” line.
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2008/11/moderates-want-competence-not-mush.html
If the Democrats become the pandering corrupt patronage left-liberal screwballs, then competent smart conservatives can win back a majority.
Actually, there are 3 Republican Governors - in VT, CT and RI.
We shouldnt be listening to someone who was last elected in the 1990s, we should listen to the current elected leaders.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems very devisive the way they are demonizing the conservatives in the GOP...
sorry but Libertarians are at least small govt types, Whitman isnt even that.
She just a moderate-to-liberal Republican at this point.
We say every "never again" every time we nominate a RINO who was picked by the media, and then we fall for that ruse again the next time.
We conservative Repubs don't nominate a conservative because we allow the media to convince us that we must VOTE FOR RINOS IN THE PRIMARIES BECAUSE A CONSERVATIVE CAN'T WIN. Not one of the 3 or 4 leading candidates in this year's Repub primaries was a conservative, so how did that happen if conservatives are the majority of the party as I believe we still are? IMHO it happened because we conservatives listened to the media and believed that the only Repubs who could win in November were liberal/moderate RINOs like Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, etc. Does anyone on this thread think that Hunter or any other real conservative nominee would have refused to attack Obama on his radical far left voting record, his collaboration with known traitors and communists like Ayers and Alinsky, and his extremely questionable financial dealings with unindicted criminals like Rezko and others of his ilk? Or would he have refused to attack Obama for lying about sitting under his pastor Wright's racist diatribes for 20 years without ever once noticing the hateful anti-whitey, anti-Semitic garbage that Wright was constantly spewing in every "sermon"?
Bottom line, if we want a conservative nominee who will relentlessly attack the Dem nominee everywhere that he or she is vulnerable we have to stop allowing the media to pick our nominee, and SUPPORT A CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE IN THE PRIMARY WITH OUR MONEY AND OUR VOTES!
Sorry for all the shouting. I just get bitterly frustrated when I think about how easily we get rolled by the Dems and their media lapdogs over and over again without ever learning anything from our losses.
Most of them (including many of my relatives, sad to say) found that voice in the Obama campaign.
There is a lot of horse sense in that analysis. I would add that the Bush administration spent itself and conservatism into moral equivalency with the rats. So we lost the competence argument in Iraq and over the economy. Should we then surrender the moral high ground on abortion? Just what then would distinguish us?
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