11-06-2008, 11:41 AM
Where do Sarah Palin, Republican Party go from here?
10:51 PM CST on Wednesday, November 5, 2008
By WAYNE SLATER and GROMER JEFFERS JR. / The Dallas Morning News
wslater@dallasnews.com
gjeffers@dallasnews.com
PHOENIX â After John McCain completed his concession speech Election Night and the crowd had gone, Sarah Palin came back out on the lawn of the hotel where the campaign ended.
A small group of people spotted her and began chanting: "2012! 2012! 2012!"
Ms. Palin, the once and future candidate, finds herself at the center of a Republican Party battered in Tuesday's election and divided over its future. While she has avoided talking about a White House run of her own, Ms. Palin represents the battle over what the GOP has been â a party dominated by social conservatives â and what some want it to become.
Four years after GOP strategist Karl Rove envisioned an enduring Republican majority, the party is at a low ebb, shrunken to a base of white, older voters concentrated mostly in the South and Midwest.
Barack Obama will follow President Bush in the White House, and the GOP, already a minority party in Congress, lost more seats in Tuesday's Democratic landslide.
Today in Virginia, a group of leading conservatives will discuss how to rebuild the party. But the conversation is only beginning â expect tough assessments in the coming weeks from insiders about the party, the McCain campaign and the Bush White House.
Some party members and experts said Wednesday that the solution is simple â a return to strict conservatism on spending and strict adherence to social conservatism. Others say the party must offer more solutions to Americans' everyday problems.
"As far as social conservatives go, the party can't abandon that because they're an important part of the base," said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in California. "But that can't be the headline, not the sole basis of the party's appeal."
At the heart of Republican success over the last two decades has been a coalition of grass-roots activities and economic and natural-security conservatives. But the alliance has begun to fray.
Many religious conservatives were lukewarm about Mr. McCain as the party's standard bearer but enthusiastic about Ms. Palin, who brought a populist, blue-collar appeal to the ticket.
At the same time, the party's intellectual elite were uncomfortable with the so-called culture-warriors in the GOP base and dismissive of Ms. Palin as ill-prepared and unworthy of the nomination.
And with no clear front-runner for 2012, Ms. Palin will, at least for a time, become the focal point of discussion about the GOP's future.
David Frum, a former Bush White House speechwriter, said Wednesday that Ms. Palin symbolized a problem bedeviling the Republican Party.
"In the eyes of many college-educated white people, the people who Bush got in 2004 and whom the Republicans owned in the 1980s, the Republican Party has become a party of culture war. It's the party of 'drill, baby, drill,' so no environmental agenda," Mr. Frum told CNN.
"It's a party that has an economic message that just doesn't work," he said.
Reconciling the party's disparate wings â or redefining the GOP in more voter-successful terms â will be on the agenda at this week's GOP strategy session, the first of many as the party seeks to rebuild its message and infrastructure in response to Mr. Obama's success.
After Tuesday's disappointing performance, party loyalists, talk radio hosts and listeners, and others began working through the list of options for a shrunken, fractured GOP.
Few seemed inclined to fault Mr. McCain directly. Mark Salter, a senior McCain campaign adviser, said the financial crisis would have doomed any Republican nominee. Getting back on top, he said, would require discipline and a return to conservative principles.
"That means having common sense and not spending like crazy," he said. "We need to get back to competent, disciplined leadership. We haven't been looking too competent over the last few years."
Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a leader among House conservatives, said the way back to dominance would be getting back to Republican basics, like limited government.
"We've hit rock bottom," he said. "But getting back to our core ideals will bring us out of the wilderness."
This week's electoral debacle is not the first time the GOP has found itself in the wilderness. During the 1960s, '70s and early '90s, the party was periodically out of power and used those periods to hone policy alternatives such as revenue sharing and the Contract with America.
"One of the few luxuries of being in the minority is that you have absolutely no responsibility," said Mr. Pitney. "You're basically a spectator, and you have the time and flexibility to do some creative thinking."
He said the GOP also needs to find something in the new Obama administration to rally against.
"Obama is going to have to make a lot of decisions, and inevitably some of those decisions are things that unite the party in opposition â maybe something on taxes or foreign policy," he said.
The Illinois senator won the White House with a message that promised an alternative to the unpopular Bush administration.
Mr. Bush will be gone in January.
"It's a perfect time to purify," said Kelly Shackelford of the Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute, "and get back to first principles."
Wayne Slater reported from Austin; Gromer Jeffers Jr. reported from Phoenix.
wslater@dallasnews.com;
gjeffers@dallasnews.com
SPLIT ON PALIN
Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, was a big factor in the voting â in both directions, according to an exit poll of voters by The Associated Press and TV networks.
Pro-Palin: More than four in 10 Republicans and about the same share of conservatives said John McCain's choice of the Alaska governor as his running mate was an important factor in their Election Day decision. Underscoring how well she fired up the party's base, both of those groups leaned lopsidedly toward Mr. McCain.
Anti-Palin: About four in 10 independents said the selection had an important impact on them, too, and a narrow majority of them ended up backing Barack Obama. About the same number of moderates also said her choice was a factor â and almost six in 10 of them were Obama voters.
Experience: Overall, just shy of four in 10 said Ms. Palin was qualified to become president if necessary, while two-thirds said the same about her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden.
10:51 PM CST on Wednesday, November 5, 2008
By WAYNE SLATER and GROMER JEFFERS JR. / The Dallas Morning News
wslater@dallasnews.com
gjeffers@dallasnews.com
PHOENIX â After John McCain completed his concession speech Election Night and the crowd had gone, Sarah Palin came back out on the lawn of the hotel where the campaign ended.
A small group of people spotted her and began chanting: "2012! 2012! 2012!"
Ms. Palin, the once and future candidate, finds herself at the center of a Republican Party battered in Tuesday's election and divided over its future. While she has avoided talking about a White House run of her own, Ms. Palin represents the battle over what the GOP has been â a party dominated by social conservatives â and what some want it to become.
Four years after GOP strategist Karl Rove envisioned an enduring Republican majority, the party is at a low ebb, shrunken to a base of white, older voters concentrated mostly in the South and Midwest.
Barack Obama will follow President Bush in the White House, and the GOP, already a minority party in Congress, lost more seats in Tuesday's Democratic landslide.
Today in Virginia, a group of leading conservatives will discuss how to rebuild the party. But the conversation is only beginning â expect tough assessments in the coming weeks from insiders about the party, the McCain campaign and the Bush White House.
Some party members and experts said Wednesday that the solution is simple â a return to strict conservatism on spending and strict adherence to social conservatism. Others say the party must offer more solutions to Americans' everyday problems.
"As far as social conservatives go, the party can't abandon that because they're an important part of the base," said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in California. "But that can't be the headline, not the sole basis of the party's appeal."
At the heart of Republican success over the last two decades has been a coalition of grass-roots activities and economic and natural-security conservatives. But the alliance has begun to fray.
Many religious conservatives were lukewarm about Mr. McCain as the party's standard bearer but enthusiastic about Ms. Palin, who brought a populist, blue-collar appeal to the ticket.
At the same time, the party's intellectual elite were uncomfortable with the so-called culture-warriors in the GOP base and dismissive of Ms. Palin as ill-prepared and unworthy of the nomination.
And with no clear front-runner for 2012, Ms. Palin will, at least for a time, become the focal point of discussion about the GOP's future.
David Frum, a former Bush White House speechwriter, said Wednesday that Ms. Palin symbolized a problem bedeviling the Republican Party.
"In the eyes of many college-educated white people, the people who Bush got in 2004 and whom the Republicans owned in the 1980s, the Republican Party has become a party of culture war. It's the party of 'drill, baby, drill,' so no environmental agenda," Mr. Frum told CNN.
"It's a party that has an economic message that just doesn't work," he said.
Reconciling the party's disparate wings â or redefining the GOP in more voter-successful terms â will be on the agenda at this week's GOP strategy session, the first of many as the party seeks to rebuild its message and infrastructure in response to Mr. Obama's success.
After Tuesday's disappointing performance, party loyalists, talk radio hosts and listeners, and others began working through the list of options for a shrunken, fractured GOP.
Few seemed inclined to fault Mr. McCain directly. Mark Salter, a senior McCain campaign adviser, said the financial crisis would have doomed any Republican nominee. Getting back on top, he said, would require discipline and a return to conservative principles.
"That means having common sense and not spending like crazy," he said. "We need to get back to competent, disciplined leadership. We haven't been looking too competent over the last few years."
Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a leader among House conservatives, said the way back to dominance would be getting back to Republican basics, like limited government.
"We've hit rock bottom," he said. "But getting back to our core ideals will bring us out of the wilderness."
This week's electoral debacle is not the first time the GOP has found itself in the wilderness. During the 1960s, '70s and early '90s, the party was periodically out of power and used those periods to hone policy alternatives such as revenue sharing and the Contract with America.
"One of the few luxuries of being in the minority is that you have absolutely no responsibility," said Mr. Pitney. "You're basically a spectator, and you have the time and flexibility to do some creative thinking."
He said the GOP also needs to find something in the new Obama administration to rally against.
"Obama is going to have to make a lot of decisions, and inevitably some of those decisions are things that unite the party in opposition â maybe something on taxes or foreign policy," he said.
The Illinois senator won the White House with a message that promised an alternative to the unpopular Bush administration.
Mr. Bush will be gone in January.
"It's a perfect time to purify," said Kelly Shackelford of the Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute, "and get back to first principles."
Wayne Slater reported from Austin; Gromer Jeffers Jr. reported from Phoenix.
wslater@dallasnews.com;
gjeffers@dallasnews.com
SPLIT ON PALIN
Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, was a big factor in the voting â in both directions, according to an exit poll of voters by The Associated Press and TV networks.
Pro-Palin: More than four in 10 Republicans and about the same share of conservatives said John McCain's choice of the Alaska governor as his running mate was an important factor in their Election Day decision. Underscoring how well she fired up the party's base, both of those groups leaned lopsidedly toward Mr. McCain.
Anti-Palin: About four in 10 independents said the selection had an important impact on them, too, and a narrow majority of them ended up backing Barack Obama. About the same number of moderates also said her choice was a factor â and almost six in 10 of them were Obama voters.
Experience: Overall, just shy of four in 10 said Ms. Palin was qualified to become president if necessary, while two-thirds said the same about her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden.