One hears so much about this elusive bloc of fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters that is essential to the GOP’s success, yet no one can actually find it, even when the GOP sets out one of these presumably attractive candidates as bait.
If this bloc existed in the numbers claimed, Romney and Pawlenty would be attracting much more unsolicited public and media interest.
People would be talking about them with the same enthusiasm that they did about Barack Obama before his nomination and election, and the way they do about Sarah Palin now.
The media would be enraptured by the (Pawlenty, Crist, Romney, etc.) phenomenon. They just wouldn’t be able to stop talking about him (or her), good or bad.
People don’t want the magical, mystical, middling muddler. They want the personality. Like it or not, Barack Obama was The Personality, and regardless of ideology, The Personality will almost always beat The Safe Choice.
Sarah Palin is The Personality today, just as Barack Obama was from the moment of his Senate election.
The Democrats had a passel of safe candidates—Edwards, Vilsack, Bayh, Warner, Richardson—but the Democrats didn’t tie themselves up in knots trying to pass one of them off as the inoffensive moderate the needed to sweep to victory in 2008. Had they done so, they would have demoralized their own base and thrown away a winnable election.
Well said, the imaginary large pool of "fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters" doesn't exist.
Loyalist, I have to agree with you. Personality is another way of saying ‘charisma’...and we like that in our leaders be they left, right or moderate. It’s one reason Teddy Roosevelt is sill remembered fondly, why JFK—even if you didn’t agree with his politics—is still revered by many (Okay, dying young by an assassin’s bullet helped), why we all smile (again left and right) at the memory of Ronald Reagan
An impossible position, social liberalism requires non fiscally responsible big spending.