There is a lesson here for all of us. To have ideals, to have principles are good. But to put these ideals and principles ahead of all else is bad (in the sense it will keep you from winning elections).
The vast majority of Amerian voters view themselves as being in the middle. They are afraid of both the hard left and the hard right.
When one extreme takes over a political party, they will lose many voters in the middle. This is the danger of those with "one issue" voters. You either believe everything I do, or I will not vote for you.
Polictics is compromise. You want to win elections, convince voters your ideas are not "crazy", convert them to your view.
The Democrats could win this year if they had not fallen under the influence of the far left. If after 9/11 they had fallen behind the President, quit the constant attack on him and his administration, support the war effort, they could be heading towards control of both houses next month.
But "purity" has won over common sense. The desire to destroy President Bush, and fight him on everything, while not offering any alternative, does not give the voters any choice.
They will win the purity vote from the far left. But will they will the average American in the middle support them?
The Democrats claim they never get their "message" out, but I suspect most know what the Democrats stand for. Income distribution via higher taxes, Special rights for the correct minorities, no support for the military, in fact they will "cut and run", abotion on demand, and the destruction of all "middle class values".
If you support those things, you will vote for the Democrats, if not, Republican.
Several good points.
I would add that Rats have continued to depend on the MSM and DBM to conceal their dilemma and shape opinion against Republicans, and it is working less and less as each day goes by. As you say, the rat message has actually gotten out by the MSM, it's just that the average American can now read between the lines, and has alternative media sources.
It depends on what you define as "hard right".
I maintain that the "problem" with the republican party is that it isn't conservative enough and by trying to pick up the "middle" they actually lose voters; not to the dims but to regular people who are more conservative than mushy republicans and just don't vote. You can see it in the presidential elections of 1996.
Again, it depends on what you call "hard" but I think Reagan had plenty of hard right ideas as did Newt and the "revolution" of the 90s. Clinton, for all his popularity was marginalized off the get go and won the election only because Bush I, while probably a great guy, doesn't have many conservative bones in his body else he would have gone to the mat with the dims and not gotten rolled into raising taxes. It was only when republicans started going mushy with Dole and then "compassionate" conservatism (I guess plain old conservatism isn't?) and ignoring what they were elected to do (see the party platform) that they really started to slip.
Just a thought.