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Romney on electability:
STRATEGY FOR A STRONGER AMERICA: THE THREE-LEGGED REPUBLICAN STOOL
"I believe that to win the White House that our candidate has to be somebody who can represent and speak for all three legs of the conservative stool or conservative coalition that Ronald Reagan put together -- social conservatives, economic conservatives and defense conservatives." -- Governor Romney
Which stool is the Republican obsession with Reagan? Make sure the 40th President is deified actually seems to be at least as important a plank in the Republican Party platform as anything else they do.
The Republican obsession with trying to put the Reagan band back together is fine with me, however. Chasing after long-past successful Republican coalitions might actually be a fatal flaw in electoral strategy for conservatives. Throughout the history of human civilization, one of the few fundamental tenants of conservatism is an obsession with past glory. In this case, conservatives are obsessed with their most successful electoral coalition of all time, even though it has gone the way of the dodo. In 1984, self-identified white Christians, whose straight, non-unionized faction forms the core of any conservative coalition in America, represented 80% of the electorate. Now, they only represent 64%, and that number continues to shrink at the rate of about 2% every three years. Republicans of today perform just as well among straight, non-unionized, self-identified white Christians as Reagan did (about 65-70%). The difference now is that there are just far fewer of those voters to draw from within the electorate. The heart of the conservative coalition is dying off, and yet Republicans still chase after it as though it can be reborn. How very, well, conservative of them. Keep chasing your visions of the past into permanent minority status, fellas.
It is also interesting how Republican arguments about electability never, ever, talk about winning the "center," "independents," or "moderates." Even Rudy Giuliani doesn't talk about electability that way:
Speaking to a Republican club here, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani offered his own version of what the party should stand for: strong national security, fiscal conservatism and beating Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). He never mentioned abortion, talking only about unspecified "differences" he might have with people in the room.
"When people around the country tell me I'm not conservative enough, will you please go back and read the New York Times editorials?" he told a crowd Thursday night in this town near the North Carolina border, drawing loud applause as he noted the criticism he took for trying to reduce the welfare rolls in New York.
Even though Bush has 130 consecutive sub-40% approval ratings dating back more than ten months, and hasn't risen above 42% in nearly two years, Republicans are still merrily chirping along, pretending as though the nation is still conservative. And even if some die-hards out there claim that what Bush is doing isn't actually conservative (yeah, right, whatever), keep in mind that progressive is now the most favorable ideological term in America. Conservative is actually third, after moderate. And so Republicans continue to argue over who is the truest version of the third most popular ideological term in America, and scramble after a long dead coalition while ignoring both moderates and progressives.
In this environment, of course Democrats are winning right now. The major electoral questions we face are which Democrats take the prize.
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