Following the conventional wisdom of the past two presidential elections, McCain tried mightily to assuage the Republican Party’s social-fundamentalist wing. His selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose social views are entirely aligned with that wing, as his running mate was clearly meant to demonstrate his commitment to that bloc. Yet while his choice did comfort those voters, it made many others uncomfortable.
Christine Todd Whitman and Robert M. Bostock have an excellent editorial in WaPo. If McCain chose Whitman for his running mate, I’ll bet that he might have taken on those PUMAs and drawn in a lot of the fiscal and social moderates to his side. He wouldn’t have needed the base. If the GOP had run the campaign on honest terms, kept the dishonesty and the overwrought fear-mongering from overwhelming the “rest of us”, they might have had a good chance.
But they didn’t. They kept playing to the extreme social conservatives. When will the GOP realize that the social conservatives want more government in our lives? You can’t talk about getting government out of our lives and then turn around and talk about shoving more control over people’s personal lives down our throats.
