Racing For The Chair

Earlier this month I wrote about an excellent column by John Hawkins over at Townhall. He has another one up that picks up where the first left off.

After a GOP beating, there is always a debate between the people who want the party to become more principled and those who want to turn the GOP into a poll-driven pile of mush that they believe will be more appealing to centrists. The problem with this whole discussion is that the "we need to be more moderate" crowd tends to simply ignore a number of inconvenient facts that make their position completely untenable.

We've already gone the moderate route -- and lost. One of the most surreal aspects of the post-2008 campaign is listening to moderates pretend that the last eight years never happened.

You say that the GOP can't win as a small government party. Well, we've already tried being a big government party for the last 8 years and it failed. You think running a moderate, pro-amnesty candidate who eschews social issues is the key to winning elections? Well, that's who we ran in 2008 and he received even less votes than George Bush did in 2004.

Principled conservatives were screaming this from the rooftops after the 2006 election. Yet all we heard out of GOP leadership was "well ya know the war..." and "it was just a tough year to be a Republican...". Here's a radical thought...why don't you try being a CONSERVATIVE instead of a "Republican"....

A "moderate" GOP can't generate the volunteers or money needed to win. Yes, the GOP needs both moderate and conservative voters to win elections. Additionally, in certain districts and states, moderate Republicans are more electable than conservatives. That being said, the rightward leaning media, fundraising, and campaign workers are dominated by conservatives. So, if the right side of the party is depressed, there's not enough money or campaign workers to go around and there isn't a strong pushback against the lies put out by Democrats. Does this sound familiar GOP? Remind us again about your fundraising numbers this year? Do I really need to say more about how far removed from your base you really are? There can be no fiscal conservatism in D.C. without social conservatism. There are some people who think the GOP needs to kick social conservatives to the curb and focus entirely on fiscal conservatism in order to help our election prospects, but they're missing three very important points. #1) For the most part, fiscal conservatives are socially conservative and vice-versa. Yes, there are socially conservative Republicans who aren't fiscal conservatives (See George Bush for example), but they're not typical. #2) In Congress, although there are exceptions, the overwhelming majority of Republicans who aren't socially conservative, aren't fiscally conservative either. Show me a Republican in Congress who's pro-abortion at least 75% of the time, I will show you a Republican who's a big spender, too. #3) People who are most concerned about traditional values make up such a large block of voters that the GOP would be lucky to hold 100 seats in the House and 30 seats in the Senate without their help. So, if the social conservatives are sidelined, the fiscal conservatives will be sidelined by default, too, because they won't have the votes to get elected. The conservative coalition that President Reagan cobbled together was symbolized by a three legged stool. Remove ANY ONE of the three legs (fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and moderates) the stool is doomed to fail. It is simple physics! The GOP's drop amongst Hispanics hasn't been caused by opposition to illegal immigration. This myth, propagated by proponents of amnesty and open borders, doesn't bear up under scrutiny. In 2000, George Bush received 35% of the Hispanic vote. In 2004, although the exit polls showed that Bush got 44% of the Hispanic vote, they were horribly flawed. Realistically, Bush probably pulled in 38%-39% of the Hispanic vote that year. In 2006, the GOP pulled 30% of the Hispanic vote and McCain captured about 31% of the Hispanic vote in 2008. First off, the fact that McCain only pulled 31% of the Hispanic vote should prove once and for all that the amnesty issue doesn't move Hispanic votes over to the GOP. If it did, certainly McCain, who has been the biggest advocate of amnesty in the entire Republican Party would have been the candidate to do it. Hispanic immigrants who came here legally are upset with those who want to give the rule breakers a pass. While we more than empathize with where these folks are coming from (given that our families often came from similar circumstances), we are not going to get excited about a candidate that spits on the hard work of our families who came here the right way - it's just not likely to happen. The GOP cannot win without the conservative media. You may like talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity or you may not, but the reality is that the GOP absolutely cannot win elections when they're telling everyone who'll listen that the Republican Party is mediocre. There are two reasons for that. #1) Those radio hosts are popular in the first place largely because the conservatives who make up the GOP's base agree with them. If the talk show hosts are not happy with something, their listeners probably aren't happy with it either -- and making your core supporters happy is the first lesson of Politics 101. #2) Because the mainstream media is so heavily biased towards the Democratic Party, most independent voters take what they say about Republicans with a grain of salt. However, independents perceive conservative talk radio hosts and their listeners to be on the "GOP's side." So, if they hear criticism of the Republican Party from those people, they tend to think it must be true. So, Republicans can afford to have Keith Olbermann and Katie Couric telling people that they stink, but they can't win elections if conservative talk radio hosts, columnists, and bloggers are ripping them up one side and down the other.

The current Republican Party leadership has long taken their biggest ally - the alternative media - for granted. However, they need to learn the lesson that Howard Dean brought to the DNC 4 years ago. They need to make the alternative media welcome partners in the process. They must listen to and respect and respond to the concerns of the alternative meide if they are ever going to find their way out of the wilderness. This is a lesson that at least one of the candidates for RNC chair has claimed to have learned, but one has to wonder about the other candidates. At least one of them has shown himself to be as clueless (when it comes to the base) as the current chairman.

Conservatives across the country are watching this race to see if the RNC is ever going to come back to its roots or if it is going to insist on fading into insignificance. The election of this RNC chair is that important to the party. Hopefully the National Committeemen and women will listen (finally) to their base and not to the consultancy class in DC.