Nov
10
Conservatives Can Win
Filed Under American Politics
Patrick Ruffini, a writer at The Next Right served on the Bob McDonnell winning gubernatorial campaign in Virginia.
He offers his thoughts on how Bob McDonnell’s conservatism, roundly condemned by the left as social conservatism of the worst kind, was no impediment to his dominating win in the recent gubernatorial race.
When Liberals Attack:
Andrea Mitchell of (no surprises) MSNBC asks:
I’m just wondering whether any Republican..can any candidate win after having written something like this: “working women are detrimental to the family”
Well Andrea, you got your answer. Yes they can and very comfortably too. In a state that Obama carried by 6% of the vote, Bob McDonnell turned round that margin into a 17% winning margin. So why did the liberal’s tediously consistent message of conservative extremism fail so dramatically.
Because it’s about the economy stupid! Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. More accurately it’s because it’s not about the ideology stupid.
Voters are less bothered about a politicians ideological underpinning and more interested in being able to trust the politician and in their solutions to the voters problems:
McDonnell is a strong conservative who early in the campaign put Deeds on the defensive by running against Obama and Pelosi’s policies, most notably card check and cap-and-trade. There was never any doubt as to McDonnell’s conservative bona fides.
But even though McDonnell was in fact a true conservative, there was no need to make the election about those credentials. McDonnell’s conservatism spoke for itself.
What the campaign keyed in on very early is that most voters aren’t ideological. In a time of crisis, they first and foremost want problems solved — and specifically, the problems created by too much government meddling and taxes to go away.
Wait, not ideological? So Ruffini’s saying we need to run moderates? No. That is precisely the opposite of what I am saying.
Because very few independents care about ideological name-checks, they won’t be swayed by scare tactics trying to persuade them that Candidate X is the ideological second-coming of Attila the Hun…In a purple state like Virginia, you can win by running as a liberal and a problem-solver (Kaine), as a moderate and a problem-solver (Warner), and as a strong conservative and a problem-solver (McDonnell).
There is no problem with conservatives who are fiscally or socially so, but the defining characteristic must be to be able to govern and to earn the trust from the public. That applies to liberals too and explains why the conservative attacks on Obama as an associate of Wright or Ayers, as a sleeper-cell socialist didn’t work. The public trusted Obama and ignored the GOP scare-mongering.
Patrick Ruffini sums up the lesson from the McDonnell campaign:
The lesson of the McDonnell campaign: Maintain your conservative principles, but make the election about policy. And whatever the issue, make sure you’ve got an app for that.
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One Response to “Conservatives Can Win”
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C. Cabbie,
Conservatives WILL win….Obama is socialist idealogue and will not change the direction he trying to take the US…which will be his Waterloo….he is already hip deep in mud and it will soon be up to his nose. Never before has an American president fallen so far, so quickly.
But, first….intelligent, responsible Americans will have to stop Obama and his socialist crone, Pelosi’s socialist takeover of US healthcare and their greenie taxation agenda.
If…somehow, their healthcare bill passes…when the realization sets in…I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the end of the Democratic party, perhaps forever.