Some would suggest, like former Governor of New Jersey and former Bush EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman (CTW), that we need to be more "moderate" and should finally free ourselves from the grip of the "social fundamentalists". I believe that CTW, rather than being a "moderate" Republican is simply moderately "Republican". She does not always seemed convinced, even on those issues that are not as controversial as abortion and gay marriage.
While CTW lays out a well-formulated argument for just such a strategy in a recent Washington Post op-ed, do we need to, as LBJ said when he signed the Voting Right Act of 1965, "lose the South for the next 40 years" so as to compete in Connecticut, Oregon, or even her home state of New Jersey?
Chris Shays is a moderate Republican, in a center-left district in a solid blue state, and yet lost! In other years, in other elections, he had the same district profile and won. What made this year different? Gay marriage on the ballot in California, Arizona, and Florida? I don't think so.
In a rematch in Washigton State for the Governorship, the incumbent Gregoire barely got by Rossi in a solidly blue state against a blue tidal wave. Had to be the Rossi position on stem cells!
Do we purge the 35-40% (or more) makeup of the current party, and 20-22% of the voting electorate, for the sake of 5-10% of the "moderate" independent vote that is, at best, unreliable in elections?
Who is going to operate phone banks, literature drops, and GOTV door-to-door? The suits, checkwriters and bluehairs?
No..."true believers" are the grunts, the "worker-bees" for the party. If CTW thinks things are bad now, turn-off 40% of the party when they were already uninspired because of who we nominated.
I think CTW carefully misconstrues the meaning of the election results in order to validate the stale argument from a 4-year-old book!
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