Thomas Sowell has a great column on this topic that’s very worth reading, especially here in Nevada where various elections have been (quite wrongly, in my view) analyzed based on whether a candidate was “too conservative” or not.
Senator Goldwater was not crazy enough to start a nuclear war. But the way he talked sometimes made it seem as if he were. Ronald Reagan would later be elected and re-elected taking positions essentially the same as those on which Barry Goldwater lost big time. Reagan was simply a lot better at articulating his beliefs.
Michael Medved uses the 2010 defeat of tea party candidates for the Senate, in three states where Democrats were vulnerable, as another argument against those who do not court the center. But these were candidates whose political ineptness was the problem, not conservatism.
Candidates should certainly reach out to a broad electorate. But the question is whether they reach out by promoting their own principles to others or by trying to be all things to all people.
Politics is a game of addition. Conservatives can (and must!) “seize the center” not by pandering to them and poll testing and shifting positions based on the latest focus group data, but by articulating why conservatism is beneficial to each and every voter regardless of skin color, religion, age or any other random demographic.
The good news is that we don’t have to hide the truth about who we really are (like the left wing groups so often do) in order to do that! As Thatcher said years ago, the facts of life are conservative.
But we do have to be better about picking candidates who actually know and understand conservatism, who have studied philosophy and history, who have done their homework on the issues of the day, and who have the intestinal fortitude to fight for and defend their principles. They need to be disciplined communicators, which takes practice and experience. Reagan was Reagan because he spent decades doing this before her ever ran for President, and spent a lot of time working with and talking to people who might not have fit a stereotypical Republican’s “base”.
It’s a lesson to Republican candidates on every level that the hard work of running for office and being successful once there starts years before you ever file for office.
And it’s a good way of assessing candidates in a primary election (or presidential caucus). I know it’s been on my mind as I watch the Presidential contenders rise and fall.
~~~
There are two ways of building a more conservative Republican party. We can study, preach, and teach the Gospel of Liberty, and ensure our candidates are particularly well equipped to do this. This takes a lot of extra work.
The easier way is to focus inward, go “RINO” hunting, and whittle ourselves down to some mythical standard of internal pureness.
Someone should go ask the Libertarian, Independent American, or Green Parties’ elected officials how well the second strategy works out for them.
