Daily Archives: Friday, November 21, 2008

…These phenomena, says Brownstein, faithfully reflected earlier decisions by the GOP to seek to build a national majority by relentless base-tending supplementing by highly targeted outreach to selected swing voter categories. It didn’t work.

All of these trends expose the same dynamic: Democrats are effectively courting voters with diverse views, but the Republican capacity to appeal to voters beyond their party’s core coalition has collapsed.Bush targeted most of his priorities toward the GOP base. And since 2005, he has faced overwhelming disapproval among independent voters and near-unanimous rejection from Democrats.

McCain, with his reputation for independence, was supposed to restore the GOP’s competitiveness among swing voters. But to win the GOP nomination, McCain embraced Bush’s core economic and foreign policies and then selected, in Sarah Palin, a running mate who waged the culture war with a zeal that made Bush and Karl Rove look squeamish.

In other words, the very fact that it was John McCain at the top of the GOP ticket this year is a testament to the failure of the “base-plus” strategies made so famous by Karl Rove. If anyone should have been able to expand the GOP base, it was the Arizonan, who entered the contest with a (perhaps undeserved) reputation for independence, particularly on issues like immigration reform and government ethics that were important to some of the same swing voter categories Rove had been lusting after.  http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2008/11/big_tent_and_clubhouse.php