Dave Stacy of NixGuy fame weighs in on AOL's
The Stump:
My own personal take is that we should not see this as a war between the moderate GOP and the conservatives, the breakdown was between social conservatives and economic conservatives. The economic conservatives felt, quite fairly, that the GOP left them for higher taxes and spending. The social conservatives really had no issues on the table, and many of them are economic conservatives as well ( a point often missed ).
That might explain the national trend in this cycle, but not in Ohio... Ohio sent back all but one of it's US House Republicans (we lost the Ney seat) and one US Senator. The social vs. economic conservative argument does make sense on the national level, but not the state level... If economic conservatives were really all that fired up about Ohio Republicans losing their religion on taxes, we'd have lost the legislature in addition to the governor's mansion and all but one state office.
The problem with the independents is not that the GOP had no outreach to them, but that the GOP was a hollow shell of itself, that had obviously sold it's soul to the moderate wing of the party, which had no vision or values of itself other than staying in power. Add the corruption in the mix, and that's not an awful message to independent voters. Hence the loss.
I think what Dave really means here is that the "independents" are now liberals...the Ohio GOP had "sold its soul" to the moderate wing, that's why they couldn't have any more outreach to the independents...there weren't any more left that were going to vote Republican... The party has moved so far to the left in the last few years, that Sherrod Brown appeared to be an attractive candidate to Ohio's voters...that should tell you something!
Prescription: Get the social and economic conservatives together, and tell the moderate GOP folks that love to tax and spend to go join the Democrats.
The answer is in coalition building...but the coalitions have to have more in common than just having an "R" at the end of their name. I belive that a real Contract with Ohio is what we need...and it needs to be a platform of ideas and principles which will guide our great state back to where she belongs...
