Some particularly right-leaning Republicans do not accept the conventional interpretation that last month’s electoral losses were a repudiation of their brand of conservatism.
They see no need to change direction; if anything, they argue, the party needs to move more decisively toward the right.
As they see it, the problem wasn’t that Republican candidates were too conservative. The problem is that they weren’t conservative enough.
John Cox is one of those making this argument. You’ve probably never heard of him – and he knows that – but he’s running for president.
On the conservative website gopusa.com, he says, “The Republicans lost the House and Senate because the American people went to the polls and demanded conservative government.”
It was the wishy-washy moderate Republicans who lost, he says, and “the elites in the GOP still don’t get it! They’re under some surreal illusion that the Republican Party must move to the left and they’re still trying to advance the candidacies of RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) in the race for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.”
The media (hiss!) have anointed RINOs as the front-runners for 2008, he says, illustrating his claim with pictures of Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Chuck Hagel and Rudy Giuliani.
Cox, a Chicago-area rags-to- riches entrepreneur, says he has organizers in 25 states. A phone message requesting a Colorado contact went unanswered.
He reflects a feeling among some Republicans that they have been sold out by the Republican establishment. But there is similar sentiment at more-established levels of the Republican Party, too.
Conservatives went on a sea cruise after the election, a week in the Pacific arranged by Rich Loy, editor of National Review.
The salty air encouraged rumination and dismissal of White House claims that such losses are to be expected in the sixth year of a presidency. It didn’t happen in the Reagan or Clinton presidencies, they noted, so the 2006 anti-Republican sentiment must be seen as “a major setback … . There is no other way around it.”
Bush was characterized as being the “third way” president that Bill Clinton aspired to be, not sufficiently conservative on issues like immigration and prescription drug benefits. Republicans in Washington had become the party of big government, concerned about keeping control, not keeping the faith. Independent voters, sensing this, turned to the Democrats.
This regret and recrimination sounds a lot like where the Democrats were two years ago, after they failed to recapture the presidency or Congress in 2004.
They made Howard Dean, notable for “the scream” and his take-no-prisoners attitude, their national chairman. They urged a return to the party’s left-most ideals, pandering to its most liberal constituencies.
This attitude persisted well into 2006. For many Democrats, pro-life Bill Ritter was too conservative.
But it’s doubtful a more liberal candidate would have come close to Ritter’s 57 percent share of the vote. Bob Beauprez, forced to the right by a difficult primary, lost because he was too conservative for where Colorado is now positioned politically.
The conservative issues Republicans hoped would work in 2006 didn’t. The GOP overestimated Americans’ dislike of taxes and fear of illegal immigration.
But the Democrats, meanwhile, eventually came to their senses. They didn’t win with candidates who were more liberal; they won with candidates who were middle-of-the-road, even conservative. That’s a lesson the Republican right should consider. The future is not on the fringes, it’s closer to the middle.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
