Posted on 12/11/2006 11:06:46 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez
Our view: In Arizona and nationwide, voters rejected rigid ideologues in favor of those who promised moderation, dialogue.
The picture that emerged from last month's elections, at both the state and the federal level, showed a majority of voters weary of hard-line, intransigent ideologues on the far right.
We know that, because voters turned both houses of Congress over to the Democrats and for the first time in many years gave Democrats 27 of the 60 seats seats in the Arizona House of Representatives.
They also re-elected Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, giving her a 27 percentage point victory over her ultra-conservative challenger, Republican Len Munsil.
And so there is some irony, to put it kindly, in the comments from some Republicans who believe the party suffered because its candidates were not conservative enough. That line of thinking suggests that what voters really wanted were tougher, more rigid conservatives. If that were true, then candidates like Republican Randy Graf, an aggressive conservative who was running for Congress in District 8, should have trounced his Democratic opponent, Gabrielle Giffords. But the opposite happened. Voters told Graf to take a hike and sent Giffords to Washington.
It is remarkable, then, to hear Republicans like Bill Montgomery, who did so poorly in his race against Attorney General Terry Goddard, declare: "The Republican Party took a hit because we strayed from the principles that make our party so strong and that serve to unify our membership, which consists predominantly of fiscal and social conservatives."
This is the same as saying Republican conservatives should stick to the principles that made them unpopular and that voters, for the most part, rejected.
Montgomery was quoted by reporter Daniel Scarpinato in a Star story last Wednesday. We are more inclined to agree with Steve Huffman, a Republican moderate who ran a primary against Graf and lost.
"I think the most important conversation we have to have right now is: 'Are we where the voters are?' " Huffman said.
It's an important, practical question that suggests that candidates should be responsive to voters' concerns. It makes perfect sense, and if other Republicans were to accept reality they would see that there was nothing mysterious about the election results. Voters rejected the fringes and moved toward the political center. The Republicans in District 8 who rejected Huffman didn't get it.
Many of them would undoubtedly agree with Montgomery, a political novice, who told Scarpinato, "I've always had a problem with the term 'moderate.' If you always take the middle ground, I don't see how that's a virtue. That's not leadership."
On the contrary, we would say that it is both a sign of leadership and a necessary asset to realize the wisdom in compromising on 10 or 20 percent of the issues in order to achieve success on 80 percent of the others.
Compromise is not a dirty word, nor is it fatal to try to understand another viewpoint in the hope of negotiating an issue that gives both sides some of what they're seeking. A case can be made that compromise is a sign of wisdom and maturity.
The point that hard-liners like Montgomery miss is that public service does not require rigid adherence to a personal ideological agenda. It requires an ability to remain flexible enough to respond to the people who elected you as their representative, not their emperor.
Failure to accept the fundamental message of the last election will eventually dilute Republican power at the state level as sure as it has at the national level. Voters want a change, not a restatement of the same old manifesto.
Which ones?
"Moderate" needs to be removed from our society...... that and Matthew Lesko.
Yeah..they love you too, and will make damned sure that no one who even remotely thinks like you do gets in office for years to come.
Meanwhile, understand this...you can't win elections without them.
You missed his point.
"Let's?"
You're a Republican?
The center.
I doubt it.
Right on.
What you're proposing is that the Republican Party follow the dictates of a mob.
It's beyond pathetic. It's frightening.
L
Reagan had massive spending and signed am amnesty.
Not a conservative?
If you are not in the center, your choice is to move to a center you don't agree with, be displaced by the politicians who do agree with the center, or try and persuade people you are right. Centers can move, and do move over time, as people are persuaded, and as reality imposes its own corrective.
Elections are decided by the Oprah-watchers, the people in the middle. If you can reach them, persuade them, inspire them, you'll have a long career in public service. If you can't, if you lack the talent for shaping the public debate and find yourself forever chasing the debate rather than framing its terms, you'll soon be back home doing whatever it is that ex-politicians do.
Your challenge, in reaching out to the center, is that you are trying to persuade people who have only the dimmest idea what you are talking about, and you've got 5 seconds to explain it before they click you off. The day you find yourself on "The View" trying to explain your plans for post-war reconciliation in the middle east, or the day you find yourself on Oprah trying to explain how you intend to decrease government intrusion into private business, you either knock it out of the park, or you start shopping your resume around the lobby firms you know who might be hiring.
Any intelligent voter in this country shouldn't be at all effected by Bill Bennett and his gambling exploits.
That's Gorgonzola.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
I don't.
The center will swing to a good leader. Reagan proved that.
ditto
This piece is a load of crap. Conservatism didn't lose, the Republican party lost. Want to see where Liberal Republicanism gets us ? Take a look at California, Illinois, New Jersey, New England. The party continues to slip away there because there is little to nothing to distinguish them from the 'Rats, either ideologically or ethically.
In order to keep Democrats out of power, you need to get Republicans elected, and the pure and simple truth is that neither Party's base is sufficient unto themselves to get their politicians elected, and until you show me a viable third party candidate, that's not an option either.
Twelve years ago, the center rolled right and threw the Democrats out of power this time they rolled left and threw the GOP out.
I can't advance any ideology with the opposition in power.
I wish I could disagree with you on this point. Sadly, I cannot.
Far too often I have heard person-on-the-street interviews conducted by Sean Hannity or Jay Leno. (Okay, so the two are hardly analogous, but they have both done such interviews.) Incredibly elementary questions (e.g. "Who is Condoleezza Rice?" or--I'm not making this up--"Who is the vice-president?" tend to provoke blank stares or wild guesses.
Bear in mind, the votes of such ill-informed souls--because there are apparently so many of them--more than negate the votes of those who take the trouble to at least master the basics.
The person/people that wrote this article don't have a damn clue as to what they're talking about. Instead, what they've written is merely what they wish to be true.
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