Not Quite Easy Street for the GOP
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The Republican party picked up quite a bit of steam after the election of Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate. But there is a lesson to be learned here from the Democrats: You can't take anything for granted. The American public is angry and emotional, and the winds can just as easily shift again. According to this Politico piece, the trick will be to keep the conservatives energized and motivated. But not so much so that they alienate the mainstream and scare away those moderate Republicans and independent voters.
Politico cites a poll of Republicans by Daily Kos as proof. The results show a Republican base that is disaffected and dripping with Obama animosity (and, incidentally, misinformed). Independents are disappointed, too, but with substantive policy decisions--not with the character of the President.
“Independents, who are particularly disinclined toward any kind of partisan rhetoric, are going to be turned off when they hear Republicans say stuff like this, which is patently crazy,” [said Jef Pollock, a veteran pollster and Democratic strategist working for Sen. Arlen Specter].
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who urged party leaders to abandon ideological purity tests on abortion and gay rights earlier this year, thinks Brown’s victory was a cue for both parties to shift to the center.
But many Republicans disagree, and instead are attaching themselves to the far-right-of-center Tea Party movement.
[F]ormer Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who is challenging McCain from the right, says Republicans spurn their conservative base at their own risk.
“This will be a base election,” Hayworth told POLITICO. “That’s where the new activism is coming from. The base is just indispensable.”
That’s the kind of talk that worries GOP leaders, who say privately that the extremity of the base, and a hard-to-harness populist tea party movement, could give deeply wounded Democrats new life.
(Photo by Paul Keleher of a Boston Tea Party demonstration 2009; C.C. 2.0)
