Talk Elections

As a moderate that still remains committed to our party (the party that Lincoln and Barry G created), I am still hopeful that eventually, the party will move back to the middle socially and become more fiscally conservative.

You take a look at what Chuck Schumer (my Senator who I happen to like) has done in the House/Senate and it's very smart.  Democrats have made serious inroads into reddish states by nominating moderate to even some conservative congressmen, senators and Governors and most of them, seem to be doing well. 

Freudenthal, Henry, Sebelius, Napolitano, and Bredesen have all stayed very popular throughout their two terms.  We've done okay too with Douglas of VT, Pataki of NY (3 terms), Carcieri of RI and Rell of CT. 

In the house and Senate though, we've gotten murdered.  We're almost unelectable now in our own VA, CO has been a nightmare since 2002, MT we've lost ground on a local level, and other bluish states that we should have a chance at holding or picking up (WA, OR, WI, MN, MI, PA, NH, ME and NJ) it's like we're just clueless.

I don't know if it's George Bush, us putting up horrid candidates, being too conservative or what, but we're not even competitive anymore in any of these and it's embarrassing.  Maybe it's finally time to realize that the middle vote matters and that the pro choicers are important to our party's breadth and survival?

Eventually...
Hopefully...
The Republican party will fail if we keep nominating people from the "far-right".

We couldn't even hold IN or NC on a national level this past election.  IN?  We should NEVER lose there in a presidential race.  I know Evan is popular and that I understand, but that was embarrassing.

What do Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, and centrism have in common? ???

Because we used to be the socially moderate party and that's the basis why we were so successful for years on a national level (outside of the 60s when we just got killed in Congress). 

Barry stated before his death that the party went way too far right and that was back in 98.  I think he's rolling in his grave now considering where we are.

Which is pretty funny, considering he opened the door for the racists and lunatics back in 1964. He wanted a conservative party, and he got one...

The GOP's problem right now has nothing to do with moderates.

The problem is a war between a conservative leadership structure that failed and an even more conservative group of rank-and-file who think the failure was synonymous with a lack of conservative values.

Nominating a moderate candidate right now would further exascerbate the problems within the GOP.  The GOP could use a Goldwater-type candidate to burn the ultra-conservative arguements to the ground so that a more traditional, main-stream party can rise from those ashes.

^^^ This.

I know one thing...

We definitely needed another one of these threads.



:P

sg0508 is new, he didn't realize that creating threads for fellow moderate Republicans to publish our sorrows was my job :)

No, the GOP will never nominate moderates.  People like Mike Castle, Charlie Crist, Meg Whitman, Rob Simmons, Carly Fiorina, Mark Kirk, and George Pataki are anathema to the Republican Party and always will be.

Yes, turning candidates like the aforementioned ones into bete noires is a phenomenal strategy for success in their respective regions.

They all have Rs in them?

What Rob said. Tragic considering Goldwater personally didn't have a racist bone in his body.

With Crist, Frazier, Guiliani, Simmons, Kirk, Gerlach etc. I think the GOP is attempting on doing a better job than usual this cycle.  Some of them won't run, but I don't see TOO many electable moderates going unnoticed

Gerlach isn't really a moderate and Rudy isn't running for anything.

Apparently the RNCC is recruiting moderates for senatorial races. There are more moderate Republicans than people think, they just don't hold office right now.

What is Simmons running for?  He got knocked out in 06 and Shays lost in 08.  At least Rell will get re-elected. 

It's a shame Castle from DE never runs for a Senate seat. 

The problem is, the ones in our party that keep losing are us RINOs.  Smith loses, Sununu loses, Chafee loses, Simmons loses, Shays loses, our 2 Rinos from NH lose (forget their names), and Hagel was forced to retirement. 

Meanwhile, idiots like DeMint are untouchable.  Guys like that are the definition of what's wrong with the party than right.

What makes Jim DeMint an idiot?  You said yourself you wanted a party that is socially moderate and fiscally conservative.  DeMint is certainly a social conservative, but he doesn't run around with a holier than thou attitude wearing his morality on his sleeve, does he?  As for fiscal issues, DeMint is one of the strongest in the Senate in opposing reckless spending by both parties in Washington.

I myself am a social moderate, but I would take 100 senators in Washington like Jim DeMint any day.  If the GOP wants to become relevant again they need a strong platform of fiscal responsibility and limited government, exactly what DeMint has been advocating.

The problem with nominating "moderates" is that the northeastern region of the United States is not "moderate" anymore, it's far-left. You either run as a liberal or you're dead. I think one of the Maine Senators actually votes more with Democrats than the Republicans.

Currently, the South and the plain states are conservative while the northeast and the west coast are liberal. The midwest and the rocky mountain west are moderate. So its only natural that the conservative party does well in the conservative states while the liberal party does well in the liberal states. The region we should be putting up "moderates" should thus be in the moderate states.

I bring this up because so many commentators think the GOP is dead just because it lost the northeast, despite its corresponding gains in the South. The real states we need to worry about are Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, etc.

Fair enough, I just meant that they were being recruited.

The GOP ran the most moderate candidate they could and got massacred. Yeah, that's what the people want. The problem is, people saw McCain and Obama and said, "What the hell is the difference?". If we had a fairly strong economic conservative running people would have had an actual choice. Why would anyone want a traitor like Colin Powell in their party? If he wants more moderates then why didn't he vote for McCain? Like I said before, we have a bunch of Zell Miller type Republicans telling the party what they should do. Roll over like dogs to the Democrats or you are going to get beaten.

Because McCain didn't run as a moderate.

Correct. He ran as a Democrat.

Support of the bailout for starters.

McCain lost mostly because the economy tanked and his VP choice went from a PR master stroke to a disaster. If Palin didn't have the baggage she did and the economy stayed more or less the same as 2007 then there's a decent chance he would have maintained his mid/late August edge in the polls. As it stands 46% of the vote in such an anti-Republican year is pretty remarkable.

He didn't run on the bailout? Could have fooled me. That was the only issue from September 15th till the end. Anyway that was half the problem with McCain, "What did he run on?" His campaign was total garbage, he rolled over like a dead dog to Obama when he should have called Obama out. Kindness killed the McCain campaign.

Of course he did but maybe due to the side on which the media was on we never really got to hear about all of that. A lot of times, especially during the debates, I had to sit back and ask myself, "What's the difference between these two guys?"

In the end that's all that matters. If people were really paying attention Obama would have a low 50's approval rating. From where I sit now I hardly see the economy improving in any way. All we have to look forward to is some lagging European style economy, high tax rates and no potential for future growth.

Until the mother of all backlashes hits that is. I wouldn't be despairing entirely yet.

We did, John McCain, look how that worked out.

John McCain is not a moderate. He was, at the very least, center right.

Agree. We tried the "moderate" in 2008, and that was an EPIC FAIL.

We didn't "epic fail" in 2008 because he nominated a "moderate;" we were destroyed because the economy suffered its worst collapse since the 1930s.

WHY, WHY DIDN'T WE NOMINATE TANCREDO!

()

I guess DeMint's "single mothers shouldn't be allowed to teach" position doesn't count.

I highly doubt a conservative would've come close to McCain's 46% PV and 173 EVs with the Bush incumbency.

Actually Lunar, I didn't like any of the 2008 candidates, the GOP deserved to lose.

Find me a politician in Washington that hasn't said something stupid.  Our VP is an expert at it.

Simmons is running against Chris Dodd and doing remarkably well so far, one poll had him at 50 and leading by double digits. Though an probably an outlier other polls show him leading by 5 to 8 points which is extremely good this far out against an incumbent.

For all of the bitchin' about McCain supporting the financial bailout, regardless of how you feel about it, if McCain opposed it, Obama would have opposed it as well and he would have done no better.  It'd hard to believe many populists started voting for Obama when they were angry at both candidates for supporting the Wall Street bail out.

I don't remember McCain's campaign campaigning on moderatism at all, for all of your "EPIC FAIL" comments.  He switched from opposing drilling in ANWR to "drill baby drill" on far more sketchy areas than ANWR.  He was more pro-war than any other GOP candidate in the field.  He didn't have evangelism as his schtick, but he didn't rebuke them like he did eight years ago and instead actively sought them out and made one of them his VP.  He rejected his own pro-immigration platform and adopted one counter to his past beliefs and stood by that throughout the election.  I have a hard time believing that just because McCain wasn't the most right-wing candidate available in some respects that he somehow was a moderate and his loss showed that a moderate viewpoint on conservatism, whatever that means, is an, let me quote you, "EPIC FAIL"

The fact that a lot of people on here can't equate the major drop in polling from Sept on starting with Lehman and the economy is remarkable.  McCain did about as well as possible.

If we had nominated someone from the far far right, Obama easily breaks 400 EVs.

McCain was the best candidate for this year. The only other GOP candidate whom I believe could have done a comparable job was Romney. His economic credentials would've been a huge asset during the financial crisis. Under certain scenarios, I can envision him doing better than McCain (though not winning). On the other hand, he had his own problems. His religion may have cost him Georgia where McCain held it. His flip flopping on social issues may have hurt him further with the southern base, and lost him credibility with the moderate and libertarian bases in the rest of the the country.

All in all, if it is true (and I'm pretty sure it is) that after the financial meltdown no Republican had any realistic chance at winning, then McCain was the best person to lose, so the GOP wasn't embarrassed by a major Obama landslide (as opposed to the minor one he had this year). 

In hindsight, Romney was the best GOP choice for November 2008. He wasn't the best GOP choice in January 2008, though, so he didn't win.

Maybe, but then you would've eliminated the GOP's best chance (among current likely candidates) to win in 2012.

Simmons is a fantastic candidate for that seat.

Based on what evidence?

I disagree.  Romney was too inconsistent with where he stood on too many issues.

Romney would have been a good candidate in 2008 because, at the end of the election campaign, all anyone cared about was the economy. Romney was all about the economy, and actually had real, tangible experience where Obama and McCain clearly had none.

He's wishy-washy as all hell when it comes to social issues, but that would have been largely irrelevant.

And for what it's worth, unless the economy is still in the dumps in Nov. 2012 (God help us if it is), Romney will be a terrible candidate for President that year. He's a niche candidate.

Neither would say what their position was until the other came out and said it.

They announced their support in a *joint conference* -- how often does that happen on the issues during a political campaign?  It was a toxic issue among both sides' political bases.

If the GOP nominates Romney or Crist in 2012 they earn my vote, while if they nominate Palin or Huckabee they lose it.

If he runs as the guy who won the Massachusetts governorship, or the guy who almost unseated Ted Kennedy, than he would be a very strong candidate. He has the opposite problem of McCain, he needs to loosen up and let people get to know what his positions really are (whereas McCain was, rightly or not, viewed as erratic and indecisive).

He went from a social moderate to a hard right fundie.....

He did reach out to hard-right fundies like Hagee and Dobson while in 2000 he called them "agents of intolerance" but McCain never really beat the abortion drum or the pro-life more than he had previously.  Part of the reason why McCain did poorly was that all he really cares about is foreign policy and earmarks, and the scope of the economic problems we were facing went beyond earmarks...

Probably the biggest argument in Smash's favor is the Palin pick.  But at the time, McCain apparently was more interested in her ant-establishment political persona taking on the corrupt Murkowski and Knowles status quo up there.

 If you've spent as much time as I have studying Romney (weird I know) you'd know that what he was doing was not being dishonest or acting in self-interest, it was trying to be everyone's candidate. 
[/quote]

Says it all. Funny how many Republicans went from decrying Kerry as a "Massachusetts flip-flopper" to supporting Romney only a few years later.....

1) Note I said (accurately) "many Republicans", not "fezzyfestoon".
2) Sure I could've gone on at great length about Romney's undeniable 180 degree flip on countless major issues, instead I chose that one sentence as a concise summary of a defense of an indefensible proposition---that Mitt Romney is no more wishy-washy or ungrounded or unprincipled than any other politician.

Seriously, can anyone think of another prominent politician who has changed his standing so completely and quickly on so many policies?

Barack Obama from January 19th until January 20th.

()

You'd think so, wouldn't you?  :P

By the way, Romney didn't really come close to Kennedy in 94.  It was 59-41%, which is a decent showing, but not really that close.

The party may not want to admit it, but it cannot win on a nat. level or in bluish states without the pro-choice/pro gay rights moderates like myself.

Exactly. That's a "close race" for Kennedy but still an easy victory for anyone else.

Now, the fact that he broke 40% in a nat. race (Pres/Senatorial) in MA and against Kennedy?  That's impressive.  I will say that.

The GOP's best shot though at a Senate seat in my lifetime in MA was Bill Weld vs Kerry.  Weld had him on the ropes in the summer of 96, until the debates saved Kerry bigtime in the fall.

... in 1994, and people thought it was going to be a lot closer.

I now remember why I supported Romney in the first place.

1) My quoting you to critique your defending Romney and the comparison of many Romeny supporters criticizing Kerry as a flip-flopper were largely unrelated. The latter was merely a tangent I went off on. Again, "many Republicans", not "Fezzy Festoon".

2) No, I don't think questioning Romney's blatant wholesale flip-flopping on many issues is either original or intellectually challenging. It's like challenging DeMint or Inhofe for being extremely conservative, or former Rep. Bob Ney for being corrupt: Obvious on its face and well-documented in the public record. That's why I tried to be concise (though am obviously failing the longer this back and forth goes on).

Now defending Romney as a man of principle who sticks to his guns--that's "original and intellectually challenging", to put it nicely.

(BTW: Although I only recently began posting to the forum I've been an active lurker for almost three years. So trust me that I've read your and others' valiant attempts to spin Romney as ideologically consistant, I just don't buy it as all evidence is clearly to the contrary.)

lol

I really need to master all the icons for posts; I've never needed a rolling eyes emoticon more than now. kthxbye

I like how this thread went from "will we nominate a moderate" to "will we nominate Romney?"

Does anyone care to discuss the question posed?

kthxbye²

Hahaha, good point.

Well I think it would be in the GOP's best interest to start nominating moderates. It seems the party planners in the GOP have forgotten that politics are regional. For example, my state is so far right wing that alot of the Democrats in the state (at least in elected office) are almost as conservative as the average Republican! While I think they should be at least a little more liberal (ie be prochoice, support alternate energy, nothing too excessive), this strategy is a little bit more effective than nominating a super liberal because that would be suicide. In fact, Oklahoma Libertarians are probably considered "far left" here compared to the Republicans and the Democrats. The point: Democrats are using regional politics to their advantage and thus moderates and even conservatives flock to their party. If the GOP just lets up a little bit on their stances and lets moderates run in pretty liberal areas like the Northeast or the Pacific Coast they could see some improvement. I mean if Republicans ran somebody in Oregon who is favorable to gay marriage or prochoice they could raise their chances of success dramatically. Believe it or not some people in those areas might be fiscal conservatives it's just the social issues scare them away from the voting booth.

What the Republican Party needs to do is nominate pretty moderate candidates in areas with very liberal Democrat candidates, because believe it or not, there are plenty of people who think the very liberal politicians are annoying just like there are plenty of people in the South who think the very conservative politicians are annoying. Now I know people are thinking "but so and so wins by a so and so large margin", but I think that wouldn't be the case if the opposing party nominated someone sane to run against the crazy. I acknowledge that so far this theory has failed in my state on the federal level (US Senators and US Representatives), but that is because the Democrats are more conservative than they are moderate. There is a difference between being a moderate and almost completely agreeing with your opponent. You don't want to look like your opponent with a different shirt on, that means voters will see very little difference between who've they've been voting into office and you, thus decreasing your chances. That is the point of the moderate politician, to weaken the extremists in the opposing party. Nobody likes extremists.

Now do I think they will start nominating "moderates"? Yes, I think eventually self-preservation of the party will outweigh any blind ideological allegiances.

Yes it was just after one of Ted's relatives(can't remember which Kennedy off hand) got in trouble and Kennedy's defense of him reminded people of Ted's past and made them wondered if he had learned anything at all from 1969. There was a poll, I remember seeing it on wikipedia, not sure if still on there though, that showed the race in a tie with a lot of undecideds.

The real reason why the party is failing was already stated: The grassroots Republicans dislike the 'liberalism' of current Republican congressmen and governors, and trust even less the leadership ability of the GOP machine.

You got it. To make it even worse is that both wings see the leadership as being there opposites politically. Moderates see the leadership as being too conservative, while conservatives see them as sellouts. Sometimes the agree on the reasons like lack of competence, over spending, corruption, others they disagree. The problem is we are running moderates and unless they start winning, conservatives are just going to say why bother to run them then and support there own candidates in those cases. You can't argue that we haven't run moderates. The truth is that until the moderates shut up about the platform, they will continue to scare the sh**t out of the social conservatives, the purging will continue.

Hopefully the party will welcome all ideologies. I rather we be populist and popular with Americans ,then One Ideology and have 1/4 or less of the Nation in the party.

Oh come on Fezzy. Romney went from running as a pro choice, log cabin endorsed, anti-gun northern Republican to running as a pro-life, vehemently anti gay marriage, NRA member. I'm not going to say he flipped on more issues than Obama or McCain. In fact I'd say they flipped on more ass. But as far as his image goes that's pretty much of his own doing. The good news is he has 3 years to stay on message and sell his strengths (business expertise, executive experience, etc.).

Barry was anything but a religious right nut though.  See his quotes regarding Jerry Fallwell. :)