Republican's On The Move : Rebuilding The Conservative Base #3

More on how the Republicans see the election and what to do next. There are several more authors that weigh in on this topic from this same article.

How the GOP Got Here
Understanding and recriminating.
An NRO Symposium

Well that wasn't good news for the Right, last night! National Review Online asked some regulars to address: “What happened to the Republican party Tuesday? Who’s to blame?”

Michael G. Franc

Two things jumped out at me in reviewing last night’s results: First, in the House, the Democrats’ surge reached far and wide. It claimed victims from both the Republican Right as well as the Middle. Reliable and effective conservatives such as Reps. Marilyn Musgrave, Tom Feeney, and Thelma Drake lost. That most endangered form of Republican, the moderate, suffered another round of devastating losses, with most of the attrition coming from a rash of voluntary and (some) involuntary retirements.

I count at least 14 more seats that have shifted from a moderate Republican to a reliably liberal Democrat. And, as was the case in the last two election cycles, once these seats flip to Democratic control they tend to transition seamlessly into safe (and liberal) Democrat seats for the foreseeable future.

With these changes, returning House Republicans will be more uniformly conservative. To the extent congressional Republicans plan to rediscover their inner conservative selves, this enhanced ideological uniformity will serve them well. The caucus of House conservatives, the Republican Study Committee, stands to gain clout within the House Republican circles.

Republicans in the Senate, meanwhile, will be tempted to write off Tuesday’s losses as the consequence of a perfect political storm that aided Democrats and, in any event, was not as bad as might have been expected. If they ever want to regain the majority, that would be a mistake.

The more prudent course of action would be to go back to basics, re-learn the core principles of conservatism, and apply them to the enormous policy challenges that lie ahead.
And that brings me to the second observation.

The exit polls, to the extent they can be believed, remind us once again that America remains a decisively right-of-center nation. Liberal remains a dirty word. In fact, many more Americans continue to self-identify as conservative (34 percent) than as liberal (only 22 percent). Knowing this, successful Democratic candidates across the country used conservative rhetoric and themes to score points against their Republican opponents and win the hearts of voters.

The Democrats’ repeated refrain on behalf of middle class tax relief was but one of several such examples. Little wonder then that 20 percent of conservatives (and 60 percent of moderates) actually voted for Senator Obama.

Undoubtedly, Republican strategists will invest considerable time in the months ahead deciphering exactly why this is the case.

Conservative strategists, in turn, will ponder why it has become so easy for liberal candidates to don the rhetoric and values of modern conservatism on the campaign trail and then shed it upon assuming office with no discernable consequence.

— Michael G. Franc is vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation.