Posted on 08/12/2013 10:46:26 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
Against all logic, some pro," minent potentates of the conservative movement promote the absurd proposition that right wing candidates who fail with GOP voters in Republican presidential primaries would magically succeed with Independents and Democrats on November ballots. This assumption enables true believers to retain their naïve faith in the endlessly repeated claim that “true conservatives” who can’t mobilize their own base to win nominations will somehow triumph in general elections by drawing massive support from moderates and liberals.
Consider Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, widely acclaimed as one of the ascendant stars in the new GOP generation. “You know, if you look at the last 40 years, a consistent pattern emerges,” Senator Cruz observed in a July interview with ABC-TV. “Any time Republicans nominate a candidate for president who runs as a strong conservative, we win. And when we nominate a moderate who doesn’t run as a conservative, we lose.”
The chief problem with this simplistic formulation concerns its total detachment from the historical record.
For instance, how could any enumeration of “moderate” GOP nominees ignore George H. W. Bush in 1988, who sought the presidency by promising to change the tone of the Reagan era and to deliver a “kinder, gentler” America? Despite the opposition of most conservatives (who passionately preferred Jack Kemp, Pat Robertson or even Bob Dole in the primaries), Bush crushed Michael Dukakis in the general election and swept 40 states and 426 electoral votes – the last Republican candidate to win the presidency decisively.
Though his son gained the White House twice with narrower margins, he also did so by emphasizing moderate rather than his conservative credentials. George W. ran as a “compassionate conservative” who had worked amicably with Democrats as Texas governor, favored increases in federal education spending, a Medicare benefit for prescription drugs, sweeping immigration reform that included a path to citizenship, and a new style of Washington leadership as “a uniter, not a divider.”
But the most striking rebuttal to the oft-repeated conservative claim that moderates always lose involves Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign some 41 years ago. The president’s first term featured wage/price controls, imposition of affirmative action, strongly intensified environmental regulations and compromise agreements with communist thug regimes in China, Russia and North Vietnam. One conscientious conservative Congressman (John Ashbrook of Ohio) challenged Nixon in GOP primaries with the slogan “No Left Turns,” and another right-wing House Republican (John Schmitz of California) conducted an independent campaign in the fall. The result: the reigning RINO captured 49 states (omitting only Massachusetts) and earned a popular vote victory margin of more than 23 points.
Meanwhile, it’s not irrelevant to note that Nixon’s mentor Dwight Eisenhower, the most reviled (by the right) of all Eastern Establishment “squish” Republicans, won two landslide victories without ever attempting to escape designation as a centrist.
But if the cherished claim that GOP moderates invariably lose counts as ridiculously wrong, what about the other half of the formulation insisting that “strong conservatives” always win?
In a sense, that’s impossible to analyze since “strong conservatives” (at least by today’s Tea Party standards) so rarely win the party’s nomination. Other than Reagan himself (whose gubernatorial record of compromise on taxes, endorsement of legalized abortion, and support for immigrants would have troubled today’s right), the only unequivocal conservative to win the GOP nomination since Calvin Coolidge in 1924 has been Barry Goldwater – who carried only six states (and a pathetic 52 electoral votes) in a 1964 wipeout of historic proportions.
The mantra that “real conservatism wins every time” demonstrates not only historical illiteracy but willful blindness to recent political history. In crucial statewide races in 2010 and 2012, stalwart, uncompromising conservatives like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Ken Buck in Colorado, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharon Angle in Nevada, Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri won GOP nominations but lost badly in highly-winnable Senate contests.
Their experience illustrates the irrational thinking behind the notion that ardent conservatives always make the best candidates, if only Republicans would prove smart enough to nominate them. Since the dramatic procedural reforms of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, no candidate for president in either party has ever been selected by fat-cat bosses in a smoke-filled room; every presidential nominee has competed successfully in hotly contested primaries and caucuses that determine the party’s candidate long before the national conventions. That means that mainstream GOP candidates like Romney and McCain haven’t been imposed by some mythical party establishment; McCain in particular has always been loathed by the most prominent GOP grandees and attracted far less of their money and endorsements than 2008 rivals like Giuliani and Romney.
Candidates win nominations because they manage to mobilize more grass roots support in key primaries than their rivals. In other words, when outspoken 2012 conservatives like Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, fail to win enough backing to prevail with the Republican base, how does it make sense to expect them to do better with independents or moderates? If it’s a question of personal appeal, why should their fervent partisanship make them more appealing to non-Republicans? And if it’s a matter of ideology, why would we reasonably expect such candidates to perform better with voters who don’t share their conservative outlook than they would with voters who do?
This leaves one last argument to support the contention that strident right wingers make the strongest Republican contenders: the claim that Romney and McCain failed to beat Obama because their non-ideological campaigns led millions of disillusioned conservatives to stay home. Talk radio in particular trumpeted the story that Romney lost because “three million missing conservatives” failed to show up to cast votes, handing a narrow victory to Barack Obama.
The chief problem for this theory involves data from electoral tabulations, which show that Romney actually drew more conservative voters to the polls than any of his Republican predecessors. In exit polling, a record 35 percent of all voters described themselves as “conservative,” compared to only 28 percent who identified that way in Reagan’s first landslide of 1980. Applying these percentages to the overall electorate, the Reagan-Carter race mobilized 24 million conservative voters, the Bush-Kerry race drew 42 million in 2004 and Romney vs. Obama easily topped them both with 45 million.
Reagan and Mr. Bush didn’t win because they drew more conservatives. They won because they performed well with independents and moderates. Reagan beat Jimmy Carter among independents by 25 points, while Mr. McCain lost that group by eight points. The Gipper prevailed among moderates by six points, while Mr. Romney lost them by 15.
These numbers show why moderate, independent candidates aren’t automatic winners any more than conservative, partisan Republican candidates are sure to prevail. John McCain has made a career-long fetish of cultivating his maverick, independent reputation but he performed far worse among independent voters than did the highly partisan Reagan. Mitt Romney won the Massachusetts governorship as a moderate, and adopted a centrist tone in his second presidential campaign, but did 21 points worse among voters who called themselves “moderate” than did the unapologetic right-winger, Reagan.
American voters, in other words, vote for talented politicians with winning personalities and display no long-standing ideological pattern to their voting. They embrace charismatic and politically skilled candidates whether they portray themselves as conservative (Reagan), “compassionate conservative” (Bush), moderate (Ike), neo-liberal (Clinton), or ardently progressive (Obama). This doesn’t mean that a supremely gifted, powerfully persuasive conservative (like Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal or Chris Christie) couldn’t win the presidency, or that a bumbling, inauthentic moderate could. It does suggest that the American people don’t award either certain victory or inevitable defeat based on ideology, despite cherished conservative legends to the contrary. Voters won’t automatically prefer conservatives over moderates but they do reliably choose likeable, live-wire candidates who look like winners over stiff, dour office-seekers of any ideology who seem like they’re ready and eager to lose.
For example, Medved writes that George Bush promised a "kinder, gentler" nation during his 1988 campaign. In truth, Bush camppaign as Ronald Reagan's successor and first spoke of a "kinder, gentler nation" during his inaugural address. Richard Nixon campaigned as a conservative in 1968, when he appealed to the "forgotten American" and in 1972, when he portrayed himself as the conservative alternative to "acid, amnesty and abortion." And although Eisenhower may have never attempted to "escape designation as a centrist," he appealed to conservatives by meeting with the conservative leader Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio) and by picking Rep. Richard Nixon (R-Calif.), the man who nailed Alger Hiss, as his running mate.
What brand of shoe polish does he use on that malignancy under his nose?
The purpose of a political party is not to simply win elections like you win a sweepstakes. It is to present its principles, and explain them, and defend them, and persuade the citizenry at large to likewise believe them and act on them.
A party that doesn’t believe in its principles is a party that has lost its reason to exist.
Medved is correct about one thing, the ground HAS moved and a conservative is not going to win nationally every time anymore. The country has changed in that regard.
Medved is genuinely wrong in saying conservative principles aren't worth defending, or pushing for. They work, we just have a harder time convincing people of that fact. Capitulation to the liberals is the wrong tactic period.
That is why I so vehemently oppose open primaries. And those on the left ought to oppose them too, for that same reason.
Medved is just pushing the tired old meme that we need to nominate a moderate to get the moderates and independents. We just haven’t nominated the “right” moderate apparently.
But a conservative just couldn’t win because they’re too divisive, though a conservative just thirty years ago got 44 states and 49 states (and 40 states if you count ‘88).
While liberals run on rigid leftist principles, we nominate worthless middle of the roaders who can’t speak well or enunciate conservatism because they don’t believe in it.
Chris Christie no doube makes Medved cream his pants while Rand Paul or Ted Cruz scares him to death. And why? Because he knows Cruz or Paul would win over people with their clear ideas, not the stuttering bowl of mush we got with the last loser.
I think it was Bob Dole who said that we should instead strive to be a “rougher, tougher nation.”
Only because of mealy-mouthed, chickensh*t Pubbies like you, Medved. If you, and every other RINO pundit out there, used your bully pulpit to push conservative candidates, ideals, and activism, maybe our Republic wouldn't be in such dire straits right now. Jacka**.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Medved spends too much time around liberals and spineless republicans.
But the GOP-E doesn't. Why?
/johnny
You can take the boy out of liberalism, but you can’t take liberalism out of the boy.
Unless it's halted -- and soon -- this country is TOAST!!
Moderates need to identify with principles or they will go with the squish every time.
The reason they vote for libs is because the libs give them something to believe in while the moderate pubbie says don’t vote for him because he is a democrat.
A Conservatve candidate provides direction and principles which the moderate from both parties can gravitate to. In this case it is the democrat who becomes squish.
People need focus. For lack of focus they will vote with the slogans the majority of the time.
Medved is missing the point on Bush I. ?He won in a landslide because people thought he would continue Reagan’s policies.
Then he didn’t. So he lost to Clintoon.
Clintoon looked to be even worse, so the conservatives and Newt Gingrich won back Congress for the first time in 40 years.
Conservatism DOES work, every time it’s tried.
Communism has failed, every time it has been tried.
That's a straw man put forth to defeat.
Nobody actually says that.
Conservatives suggest that Conservatives win more often than Democrat Lite RINO Wannabes.
Going thru the Dan Balz postmortem book about the election, it does not appear that Obama’s people had to work very hard to find boiling cauldrons of class warfare to exploit. Not the electorate that turned out in 1980.
Chris Chistie a conserevative???Really??
Agreed. Bush rode the conservative coattails of Reagan. He lost because he rejected conservatism and was blamed for the recession that resulted. Dole lost because he was a blubbering damned fool and no one believed he believed what he said. Bush2 won because he ran as a conservative against the Clinton recession.
Then I saw who it was. Oh. Yeah. Yup, that would be him, all right.
Not true, but then it's Grade One, 100% RiNO-dropping RNC Prolefeed, spread around diligently with the Medved pitchfork.
Medved will never get over his RiNO-ness or his aversion to the Palins and Cruzes of American politics until someone catches Linda Graham, Juan McPain, Jeb Bush, George P, and Ann Coulter all in bed together with a dead woman and a live boy.
That's what it would take, to get Medved to snap to.
True -- the conservatives stayed home, courtesy of voter-suppression ops run during the primaries by the GOP-E and Mitt the Monster, and by Barky in the summer and fall.
Obarko knew the conservatives were going to stay home, that's why he could get away with as much as he did .... well, having the Press 100% in your corner and bent over with their pants down helped, too.
The premise of the article is pure bullshit. Neither moderates or conservatives always win. Idealogy matters less than personality in politics.
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