From a purely pragmatic point of view, John Avlon is right — picking up more moderates is *a way* (but not THE only way) of winning. I don’t think there’s much dispute on that. If you lose 5% of the ‘base’ but pick up 5% of ‘moderates’ you still get more votes (-(0.05*0.3)+(0.05*0.5) = +1%), according to the stats given in the article. So…
I throw in the usual disclaimer here of the fact I’m not American. I try to follow your news, your blogs, but at the end of the day I’m not exposed to American culture day after day all around me.
There comes a point — probably very soon for the Republican party — where the choice has to be made whether to stick hard to the ideals and be willing to lose, or compromise and improve the chances of winning. The former relies on the long-term view of attracting (or bringing back) people to those set of ideals, so a good set of arguments are needed. Slightly depressingly, most people vote reactively rather than simply actively, that is to say, short term needs outweigh any long-term effects. I think the economy situation was a fairly good example of that. In an ideal world we’d all sit down and think carefully about our own philosophies and vote carefully and decisively without being swayed by media panic or otherwise. I don’t really know what more I can say about that. There’s not an easy solution, but a good start would be to more clearly lay out the Republican ideals — I felt McCain’s campaign was more of “what we’re NOT” (ie. compared to Obama) rather than “what we ARE”. Again, that’s only from what I’ve seen — and it’s been from abroad.
As I mentioned, the alternative was compromising on a few things to pick up moderates, or at least more of them. From the point of view of winning, it’s a good idea, it’s a *pragmatic* idea — whether it’s the *right* idea I am not one to say. Is this a good way to introduce more moderates to Republican ideology and gently lean back towards the right? That might be seen as a somewhat deceptive method, but I would tend to agree that a few more defeats of this nature would put the GOP in some serious trouble. Maybe pure pragmatism isn’t the best (or ideal) way to play it next time, but if victory isn’t coming, then it’s the age-old rule of adapt to survive (and not get bogged down with intra-party fighting!).
A last few comments from me —
Lynn talks abut everything center and lukewarm… you know, that reminds me of British politics here. The parties all so similar it’s very hard to tell them apart at times. It’s less of a vote for ideology here and more of a vote for the ‘least incompetent’. I actually do like American politics for the way there are clear, and separate choices. On the other hand, people here are very unlikely to lose friends/family over political choices, if it matters to them at all. Ups and downs.
As for the “Palin pick”… certainly it was intriguing. But after a while I think, speaking as a moderate/centrist, it totalled to a negative net sum for the campaign from my point of view. I’m just calling it how I’m seeing it. Did it work for the base? I’ve not seen anything excite the Republican base that much for quite some time. Did it work for the moderates? I think the statistics show no. In counter to the opening math, picking up base votes and losing moderate votes in equal percentiles is a net loss. That said, given McCain was ~6% down in the popular vote (I think?) he’d have to get 30% more of the moderates to win, but that is assuming that at the same time he gets 30% of the moderates, he loses 30% of the base (unlikely). For example, if he didn’t lose any base votes at all, a 12% gain from moderates would have made the popular vote equal. 12% is still not at all insignificant, however, but I think it is (was?) possible.
Pragmatism or idealism, a hard choice. But my experience from over here has led me to expect America will at least 80% of the time try and work by ideals.
