“Let me rephrase. We need to win moderates, actually as many Americans as possible, over to Conservative values.”
Exactly! We need to win the moderates to our values, not dilute Conservatism until it’s just “Liberalism-lite”, which never works. I think the same thing applies to immigrants and the Hispanic vote. We’ll never out-amnesty and out-free-sh*t the Democrats, but some immigrants who are interested in having the country they immigrated to remain free and prosperous will be open to our message. The rest we would never get, no matter what.
The Obama-care trainwreck is a great opportunity to reach these people. The left can get away with lying about the exploding national debt and Obama’s disastrous foreign policy, but how do you lie about cancelled health-insurance policies and massive premium increases? Here are the results of big-government Liberalism, right in people’s faces. And not one Republican voted for it.
/johnny
“Let me rephrase. We need to win moderates, actually as many Americans as possible, over to Conservative values. If we don’t and the moderates go for Hillary (for example), we will still lose whether we run Cruz, Palin, or some RINO.”
Perhaps my perspective is skewed by being from Colorado. We don’t have “moderates” per se. We have Unaffiliated Voters. I know personally a bunch of UAF’s who are NOT moderate. They are disaffected conservatives, libertarians, white working class men, young and uninvolved etc. I’m sure some are actually moderate in the sense they don’t want people to argue.
I write off the “don’t argue” folks right away. Nothing will be accomplished to save America by lack of conflict. Conflict with progressives is an essential part of getting our nation back. They will not surrender power without a fight.
Some UAF’s are, of course, just liberals who don’t want to admit it. Maybe they’ll come around someday. But they too are pretty hopeless.
But the rest of the UAF’s are up for grabs—but not with moderation.
White working class men (the Reagan Democrats) respond to economic populism and social issues—guns, abortion, homosexual marriage, amnesty. Limited government per se does not do it for them. However, us vs the big companies and big government who are keeping you down does. That’s effectively a limited government argument that speaks to them.
Libertarians and conservatives respond to Constitutional and limited government/limited spending issues and gun issues. Amnesty, abortion, and homosexual marriage issues turn them off.
Conservatives respond to limited government/constitutional issues and, in addition, the entire social issue group.
Young and uninvolved, surprisingly, respond to gun issues (a little known fact is that positive attitudes toward guns in the 18-35 bracket is stronger than in any other age group). Abortion, and homosexual marriage issues turn them off but they are reachable on amnesty. The Obamacare fiasco is possibly a teaching moment for them on limited government issues, about which they have not thought much.
So all of of these UAF groups unite on gun issues. Three of the four unite on amnesty and limited government/spending if it is posed correctly. The difficulty is keeping them together on homosexual marriage and abortion.
None of these groups responds to vacuous moderates like McCain, Romney, McConnell and Boehner. So the GOP-E has a losing strategy, unless the goal is to keep enough power to continue shoving subsidies toward their buddies. In fact, that is the core problem. That central truth about the GOP-E is what increasingly is driving conservatives, libertarians, and white working class males out of the GOP.
The tough part, of course, is stitching together a coalition that includes these four groups on other issues along with the GOP. The other tough part is keeping GOP money in races where the GOP money is there because it is donated by businesses that WANT a big powerful government that spends money with their companies and cheap labor from Mexicans. The later problem has been partly solved with independent groups like Freedom Works and AFP—but most money in GOP primaries is still greedy, business money.