The Myth of the Triumphant Conservative

[Toro]

You've heard this before: "A conservative always wins. A moderate never does. So Republicans have to nominate a conservative."

Never mind the gaping leap in logic that a "real" conservative (according to the dogmatic conservative ideologues) rarely wins the Republican nomination so why would a conservative have an easier time in the more moderate electorate? It simply isn't true. The way to win Presidential elections isn't to be a conservative Republican, it is to move to the center.

Ideologues of all stripes succumb to the mistaken belief that their ideology is always appealing to the majority, and that The Truth will prevail if clearly articulated. And the more deeply held the ideological belief, the more the ideologue believes this to be true. This pertains not only of conservatives but to liberals, socialists, libertarians, Marxists, Austrians, etc. This is why conservatives believe that if only they had nominated a "real" conservative, they wouldn't have lost the election.

Results suggest otherwise.

Such projections of doom portray Mr. Romney as the dreary second coming of John McCain—a hapless moderate foisted on the disillusioned rank and file by the GOP's country-club establishment, with no real chance to rally the conservative base or draw clear distinctions with Barack Obama.

This analysis, endlessly recycled on the right, relies on groundless assumptions about recent political history. Three myths in particular demand rebuttal and rejection as a prerequisite to GOP success in 2012 and beyond:

1) Many analysts cited by the New York Times, Washington Times and other prominent media sources continue to blame the Republican defeat in 2008 on the millions of conservative true believers who allegedly stayed home rather than vote for the notorious "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) John McCain. In fact, the exit polls showed that the 34% of all voters who described themselves as "conservative" in 2008 precisely matched the portion of the electorate that saw itself as conservative for George W. Bush's re-election in 2004. Because of the much larger overall turnout in 2008, this meant that far more self-identified conservatives (44,627,000) showed up at the polls for the McCain-Obama battle than in the prior duel between Mr. Bush and John Kerry (41,571,000).

Mr. McCain lost because he performed more feebly than Mr. Bush among moderates (winning only 39%, down from 45%) and particularly among Hispanics (down to 31% from 44%), according to the exit polls—and not because right-wingers refused to vote or capriciously abandoned the Republican cause. Election Day 2008 saw the biggest turnout of self-described conservatives in American history, and Mr. McCain drew an even larger portion of those voters (78%) than did Ronald Reagan (73%) in his landslide over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

2) According to another prevailing myth, frequently promoted on talk radio and in right-wing blogs, Republican elites disregarded the obvious public preference for more unequivocally conservative candidates and forced the nomination of the unpopular , Washington-tainted insider, John Mr. McCain, who proceeded to run a disastrous campaign that dragged down the GOP at every level.

None of this bears the slightest connection to reality. In the run-up to the nomination, the party establishment preferred anyone but Mr. McCain (with Bush loyalists still smarting from his "maverick" challenge to their crown prince in 2000). The establishment split its support among Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani.

... Moreover, in the general election Mr. McCain ran ahead of the Republican ticket in every region of the country. He drew 7,750,000 more votes than did GOP candidates for the House of Representatives, winning 45.7% compared to 42.5% for his GOP running mates. Mr. McCain captured 49 congressional districts where the Republican candidates who ran alongside him lost. If GOP nominees had performed as well as Mr. McCain in those districts, the Republicans would have won a House majority of 227. and John Boehner would have become speaker two years earlier.

Contested statewide races for governor and U.S. Senate seats told a similar story, with Mr. McCain running ahead of the Republican ticket in 61% (28 of 46). In most of the few cases where statewide candidates outperformed Mr. McCain, the GOP ran veteran office holders (Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Susan Collins in Maine, Jon Huntsman in Utah, Jim Douglas in Vermont) with even more pragmatic, centrist reputations than Mr. McCain. Across the country, his performance justified the main practical rationale for his nomination as he won literally millions of votes that other more stridently conservative candidates failed to get.

3) Rush Limbaugh's favorite slogan, "Conservatism wins every time," is more a statement of wishful thinking than an accurate summary of electoral experience. It's true that Ronald Reagan's inspiring, comprehensive conservatism brought two sweeping victories (in 1980 and '84). But the same supremely gifted candidate lost two prior runs for the presidency (in 1968 and 1976) to two charismatically challenged, moderate rivals, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Barry Goldwater electrified Republicans with his delineation of "The Conscience of a Conservative," but he lost 44 states to the unspeakable Lyndon Johnson in 1964. More recently, tea party-affiliated candidates won several high-profile primary victories in 2010 and went on to ignominious defeats in easily winnable Senate races in Delaware, Nevada, Colorado and Alaska.

The big Senate gains for Republicans in 2010 came mostly from establishment figures like John Hoeven in North Dakota or Dan Coats in Indiana, along with unapologetic moderates like Mark Kirk in Illinois. The two most celebrated tea party victors in Senate races, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, actually won lower vote percentages in their states than Mr. McCain did two years earlier.

In short, the electoral experience of the last 50 years does nothing to undermine the common-sense notion that most political battles are won by seizing and holding the ideological center. In the last two presidential elections, more than 44% of voters described themselves as "moderate," and no conservative candidate could possibly prevail without coming close to winning half of them (as George W. Bush did in his re-election).

The notion that ideologically pure conservative candidates can win by disregarding centrists and magically producing previously undiscovered legions of true-believer voters remains a fantasy. It is not a strategy. At the moment, it is easy to imagine Mitt Romney appealing to many citizens who would never consider Rick Perry or Herman Cain. It is much harder (if not impossible) to describe the sort of voter—Republican, Democrat or independent—who would refuse to support Mr. Romney (over Barack Obama!) but would somehow eagerly back Messrs. Perry, Cain or Gingrich, let alone Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum or Ron Paul.

...

Michael Medved: Conservatives, Romney, and Electability - WSJ.com

 

[PoliticalChic]

You've heard this before: "A conservative always wins. A moderate never does. So Republicans have to nominate a conservative."

Never mind the gaping logic that a "real" conservative (according to the dogmatic conservative ideologues) rarely wins the Republican nomination so why would a conservative have an easier time in the more moderate electorate? It simply isn't true. The way to win Presidential elections isn't to be a conservative Republican, it is to move to the center.

Ideologues of all stripes succumb to the mistaken belief that their ideology is always appealing to the majority, and that The Truth will prevail if clearly articulated. And the more deeply held the ideological belief, the more the ideologue believes this to be true. This pertains not only of conservatives but to liberals, socialists, libertarians, Marxists, Austrians, etc. This is why conservatives believe that if only they had nominated a "real" conservative, they wouldn't have lost the election.

Results suggest otherwise.

Such projections of doom portray Mr. Romney as the dreary second coming of John McCain—a hapless moderate foisted on the disillusioned rank and file by the GOP's country-club establishment, with no real chance to rally the conservative base or draw clear distinctions with Barack Obama.

This analysis, endlessly recycled on the right, relies on groundless assumptions about recent political history. Three myths in particular demand rebuttal and rejection as a prerequisite to GOP success in 2012 and beyond:

1) Many analysts cited by the New York Times, Washington Times and other prominent media sources continue to blame the Republican defeat in 2008 on the millions of conservative true believers who allegedly stayed home rather than vote for the notorious "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) John McCain. In fact, the exit polls showed that the 34% of all voters who described themselves as "conservative" in 2008 precisely matched the portion of the electorate that saw itself as conservative for George W. Bush's re-election in 2004. Because of the much larger overall turnout in 2008, this meant that far more self-identified conservatives (44,627,000) showed up at the polls for the McCain-Obama battle than in the prior duel between Mr. Bush and John Kerry (41,571,000).

Mr. McCain lost because he performed more feebly than Mr. Bush among moderates (winning only 39%, down from 45%) and particularly among Hispanics (down to 31% from 44%), according to the exit polls—and not because right-wingers refused to vote or capriciously abandoned the Republican cause. Election Day 2008 saw the biggest turnout of self-described conservatives in American history, and Mr. McCain drew an even larger portion of those voters (78%) than did Ronald Reagan (73%) in his landslide over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

2) According to another prevailing myth, frequently promoted on talk radio and in right-wing blogs, Republican elites disregarded the obvious public preference for more unequivocally conservative candidates and forced the nomination of the unpopular , Washington-tainted insider, John Mr. McCain, who proceeded to run a disastrous campaign that dragged down the GOP at every level.

None of this bears the slightest connection to reality. In the run-up to the nomination, the party establishment preferred anyone but Mr. McCain (with Bush loyalists still smarting from his "maverick" challenge to their crown prince in 2000). The establishment split its support among Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani.

... Moreover, in the general election Mr. McCain ran ahead of the Republican ticket in every region of the country. He drew 7,750,000 more votes than did GOP candidates for the House of Representatives, winning 45.7% compared to 42.5% for his GOP running mates. Mr. McCain captured 49 congressional districts where the Republican candidates who ran alongside him lost. If GOP nominees had performed as well as Mr. McCain in those districts, the Republicans would have won a House majority of 227. and John Boehner would have become speaker two years earlier.

Contested statewide races for governor and U.S. Senate seats told a similar story, with Mr. McCain running ahead of the Republican ticket in 61% (28 of 46). In most of the few cases where statewide candidates outperformed Mr. McCain, the GOP ran veteran office holders (Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Susan Collins in Maine, Jon Huntsman in Utah, Jim Douglas in Vermont) with even more pragmatic, centrist reputations than Mr. McCain. Across the country, his performance justified the main practical rationale for his nomination as he won literally millions of votes that other more stridently conservative candidates failed to get.

3) Rush Limbaugh's favorite slogan, "Conservatism wins every time," is more a statement of wishful thinking than an accurate summary of electoral experience. It's true that Ronald Reagan's inspiring, comprehensive conservatism brought two sweeping victories (in 1980 and '84). But the same supremely gifted candidate lost two prior runs for the presidency (in 1968 and 1976) to two charismatically challenged, moderate rivals, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Barry Goldwater electrified Republicans with his delineation of "The Conscience of a Conservative," but he lost 44 states to the unspeakable Lyndon Johnson in 1964. More recently, tea party-affiliated candidates won several high-profile primary victories in 2010 and went on to ignominious defeats in easily winnable Senate races in Delaware, Nevada, Colorado and Alaska.

The big Senate gains for Republicans in 2010 came mostly from establishment figures like John Hoeven in North Dakota or Dan Coats in Indiana, along with unapologetic moderates like Mark Kirk in Illinois. The two most celebrated tea party victors in Senate races, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, actually won lower vote percentages in their states than Mr. McCain did two years earlier.

In short, the electoral experience of the last 50 years does nothing to undermine the common-sense notion that most political battles are won by seizing and holding the ideological center. In the last two presidential elections, more than 44% of voters described themselves as "moderate," and no conservative candidate could possibly prevail without coming close to winning half of them (as George W. Bush did in his re-election).

The notion that ideologically pure conservative candidates can win by disregarding centrists and magically producing previously undiscovered legions of true-believer voters remains a fantasy. It is not a strategy. At the moment, it is easy to imagine Mitt Romney appealing to many citizens who would never consider Rick Perry or Herman Cain. It is much harder (if not impossible) to describe the sort of voter—Republican, Democrat or independent—who would refuse to support Mr. Romney (over Barack Obama!) but would somehow eagerly back Messrs. Perry, Cain or Gingrich, let alone Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum or Ron Paul.

...

Michael Medved: Conservatives, Romney, and Electability - WSJ.com

Grrrrrrrr......

I am so sorry you posted that.
I listen to Medved every chance I get, read his books, and respect the guy. Plus, his stats are pretty much spot on.

And I'd love to believe that conservatives always win....
...but they don't.

Medved is the Romney kind of Republican....he's got a lot of good poiints, with which I agree, but he's not a 'true believer.'

But, as Lincoln said, "Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong."

Once the nominee is determined, conservatives will back whomsoever it is.

 

[Dot Com]

So he doesn't want social conservatives to stay home when Romney wins the nomination? That will be difficult for many of them.

 

[Toro]

Grrrrrrrr......

I am so sorry you posted that.
I listen to Medved every chance I get, read his books, and respect the guy. Plus, his stats are pretty much spot on.

And I'd love to believe that conservatives always win....
...but they don't.

Medved is the Romney kind of Republican....he's got a lot of good poiints, with which I agree, but he's not a 'true believer.'

But, as Lincoln said, "Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong."

Once the nominee is determined, conservatives will back whomsoever it is.

I've always believed it is better to get half of what you want than none at all.

Reagan believed that too.

 

[PoliticalChic]

So he doesn't want social conservatives to stay home when Romney wins the nomination? That will be difficult for many of them.

Was McCain the choice of conservatives?
He certainly was
not.
But he got 3 million more conservative votes than Bush did, and a higher
percentage of conservative votes than Reagan did against Carter.
This from exit polls.

It indicates that conservatives will vote for Romney if he
gets the nod.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Grrrrrrrr......

I am so sorry you posted that.
I listen to Medved every chance I get, read his books, and respect the guy. Plus, his stats are pretty much spot on.

And I'd love to believe that conservatives always win....
...but they don't.

Medved is the Romney kind of Republican....he's got a lot of good poiints, with which I agree, but he's not a 'true believer.'

But, as Lincoln said, "Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong."

Once the nominee is determined, conservatives will back whomsoever it is.

I've always believed it is better to get half of what you want than none at all.

Reagan believed that too.

"Die-hard conservatives thought that if I couldn't get everything I asked for, I should jump off the cliff with the flag flying-go down in flames. No, if I can get 70 or 80 percent of what it is I'm trying to get ... I'll take that and then continue to try to get the rest in the future."
Ronaldus Maximus

 

[Toro]

So he doesn't want social conservatives to stay home when Romney wins the nomination? That will be difficult for many of them.

Was McCain the choice of conservatives?
He certainly was
not.
But he got 3 million more conservative votes than Bush did, and a higher
percentage of conservative votes than Reagan did against Carter.
This from exit polls.

It indicates that conservatives will vote for Romney if he
gets the nod.

And if conservatives came out in force for McCain against a charismatic candidate whom they knew little about, why would they not come out for Romney against a weak candidate they know and loathe?

 

[Dragon]

Right-wing voters didn't come out in force for McCain.

I wonder about that stat that McCain got "a higher percentage of conservative votes than Reagan did against Carter." How was that measured? How was it determined that someone was a "conservative voter"? At a guess, through self-labeling in an exit poll?

If so, there are obvious problems with this. One finds right-wingers repeatedly trotting out polls showing that only 21% of Americans currently self-label as "liberal," yet issue polls show that liberal positions on actual issues are supported by 40-60% of the people, which means that there are an awful lot of liberals out there who for whatever reason refuse to call themselves liberals. Could be there are problems on the other end, too. Then again, it also could be that those few conservative voters who did vote in 2008 voted for McCain pretty reliably.

Elections these days are mostly decided by voter turnout. Obama ran a strongly progressive campaign (which is why his tacking to the right in office was such a let-down), and liberal voters were galvanized to an extent not seen in decades. At the same time, conservative voters weren't excited about McCain, and tended to stay home. Hence Obama's big win. In 2010, the same process worked in the other direction: liberal voters stayed home while conservative voters went to the polls. The Republicans won only about 22% of the registered voters in that election -- but that was enough, because more Republican and Republican-Independent voters voted than did Democrats and Democrat-Indies.

This election presents a different dynamic than 2008 or 2010. Progressives have communicated their dissatisfaction with Obama and the Democrats loudly and clearly, and everything hinges on what they do about that. It's too early to say at this point, but Obama has a CHANCE to do what Franklin Roosevelt did in 1936: shift to the left in the face of popular pressure. IF HE DOES -- and I'm not saying he will, mind -- then he wins. Doesn't matter who the GOP nominee is. IF HE DOESN'T, and that's a distinct possibility, THEN it matters who the GOP nominee is, because the election will be closer. That's when the OP becomes a reality.

Here's why. Take any of the GOP candidates except for Romney and possibly Gingrich, and you find he or she appeals to only a small segment of the voters, the hardest of hard-core Republicans. It's not so important who the "true independents" like, the real swing voters, because they barely exist anyway, but there are a lot of Republicans and Republican-Indies out there who don't subscribe to hard-right positions. A majority of the party's voters in fact. So a hard-right candidate will make maybe 20% of GOP voters more inclined to go to the polls, while a more moderate candidate will make the other 80% more inclined to do so, and the hard-right voters are more inclined to vote anyway than the moderates. So in presidential elections it's better for the GOP to nominate a moderate, center-right candidate.

Now, that would normally be true on the other side of the aisle, too, except for the fact that the Democrats are taking economic positions to the right of what the people want already, in actual legislation, and that's a burning issue. So -- not that there's any doubt who the Dem nominee will be -- but it very much matters what Obama does between now and Election Day in terms of taking a populist economic stance, something that he has so far not done convincingly.

If he does that, OR if the economy substantially improves between now and then, he can't lose. If he doesn't, AND the economy remains a mess, then the Republicans have a chance, and in that case Romney is the best chance they have.

 

[Dot Com]

So he doesn't want social conservatives to stay home when Romney wins the nomination? That will be difficult for many of them.

Was McCain the choice of conservatives?
He certainly was
not.
But he got 3 million more conservative votes than Bush did, and a higher
percentage of conservative votes than Reagan did against Carter.
This from exit polls.

It indicates that conservatives will vote for Romney if he
gets the nod.

if those are totals, that would include Independents. A far -right candidate would get a lot less Independent votes.

 

[Reactionary]

The supposedly right-wing candidates that win but are actually moderates and center-of-left in most issues are the reason why the country keep moving to the left and expanding government gets eveb bigger even when republicans have won most of the recent presidental elections during the last 60 years