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[Adventurer]

Moderates to blame for GOP losses, conservative leader saysStory Highlights
Family Research Council official says conservatives always beat moderates

GOP should champion conservative values like those of Ronald Reagan, he says

Conservatives trying to rebuild movement in all 50 states

Next Article in Politics �


By Scott J. Anderson
CNN

(CNN) -- A conservative leader Friday laid the Republican Party's poor showing at the polls at the feet of moderates who, he argues, led the party away from its core principles.


Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says the GOP must return to conservative principles.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told CNN that conservatives need to take back control of the GOP if the party is to return to its winning ways.

"Moderates never beat conservatives. We've seen that in past elections," he said.

Rejecting suggestions that the conservative movement was viewed as being out of touch with the electorate, Perkins says the Republican Party needs to go back to basics.

"It's a return to fundamental conservative principles that Ronald Reagan showed work and that people can be attracted to," Perkins said.

Pointing to measures in California, Florida and Arizona barring same-sex marriage that passed Tuesday, Perkins said President-elect Barack Obama's election did not mean the country had embraced liberal social views.

"There was clearly no mandate to shift the country to the left on social issues," Perkins said. "What Tuesday was, was a fact that people wanted change, and it's a rejection of a moderate view." Watch what went wrong in the McCain campaign �

Perkins' comments come after a post-election conservative conclave met at an undisclosed location in northern Virginia on Thursday.

TONYPERKINS?

[canuckistan]

Read: blame McCain--not a "true" conservative.

[Jandar]

The problem with McCain and his camp is that they failed to see that the "Conservatives" and the "Religious Zealots" had no where to go the choice was McCain or Obama or No Vote.

I doubt many of those Righties were going to vote for Obama so I would have counted on them voting McCain or nothing.

So then my strategy should have focused on the swing vote, a voting block that McCain controlled in the 2000 primaries, in states with open primaries and same day registration the swings came in for McCain.

I think McCain should have played his hand to the swing vote rather than Palin and the wing nuts.

I think he would have done better with Hilary as a running mate.

[Milwaukiedave]

[On the other hand]

[Tjames426]

Not everyone was happy that the GOP gave billions of dollars to companies without restrictions on use.

***

Gee...Million dollar a year Executives lay off employees, cry over lost income, and are near bankrupt ...

G.W.Bush and McCain:

Hey, let's give them free $$$$$ and not tell them what to do with it!!!

>>> This election had nothing to do with politics...had everything to do with the present economic system of greed. Interesting that none of the Conservative political Christian Right have come out to speak against this travesty of economics.

[Adventurer]

[Kikomom]

Sarah Palin incited hate. The campaign was run on fear of the black Hussein. Moderate pubs had already been fooled twice by what they had hoped would be conservatism. What kind of shame (sham?) would a third time make it? No wonder they stayed home.

Perhaps some saw the hate being spewed as a rot that would only drag them down more. Hardly a loftier position.

[oskinny1]

One of the most telling signs for me was when my father told me he regretted his early voting for McCain. Good ol' pa is a die hard GOPer who served in the Bush administration. He just couldn't accept Palin as being anything but incompetent. And this is coming from someone who had Senator Ted Stevens in our house for fund raisers.

[yawarakaijin]

I am hoping that this election was in fact a final repudiation of the religious right. They have no place in a modern democracy, not with the challenges that are going to be facing us in the future.

Religious zealotry hasn't and isn't working out too well in the middle east so why would we want it to play a part in politics here?

I'm hoping for a new party to emerge from the ashes quite honestly.

[Adventurer]

[Gopher]

[yawarakaijin]

Trust me. I am equally dismissive of religion playing a role in politics whether it comes from the left or the right. I am able to see it for what it is from either side.

I am not debating the fact that certain left-wingers do in fact have a socially conservative element to their politics but they have rarely had the political clout the right has had over the past eight years.

One could argue that the politics of the religious left is far less harmful than that of the religious right. Obviously I am simplifying but the religious left seems to concern itself with equal/human rights where the religious right, as of late, seems to be the only element condoning and pushing for continued military action overseas.

You are intelligent enough to understand why that particular element of the right has no issues with carrying on military conflict in that part of the world.

I am not anti-conservative by any means. I actually think a good deal of Canadians and others agree with the basic tennants of conservatism but lets face it, the religious right has co-opted almost everything that honest conservatism stands for.

If the conservatives had been able to disavow itself from the religious right I think we would have seen an entirely different election. I would rather stand alone as a independent than be lumped in with those kooks. A road I think we might be seeing McCain take in the future.

[Gopher]

I do not vote with or defend the far right. "Pro-Life" and Pat Robertson and all of that. But I object to the left's chronic use of "the religious right" as a foil, as if they seemed to believe that there were no "religious left" or that at least some elements who vote with the left do not share quite a lot -- socially, in this case -- with some aspects of this dreaded religious right we hear so much about.

Are politics and religion a problem or not, I ask (not necessarily to you, Yawarakaijin; and I was using the plural "you," in my post above, incidentally)?

[Big_Bird]