{"id":912,"date":"2007-06-14T05:27:21","date_gmt":"2007-06-14T11:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/06\/13\/the-battle-for-the-reagan-democrats\/"},"modified":"2007-06-26T08:41:50","modified_gmt":"2007-06-26T14:41:50","slug":"the-battle-for-the-reagan-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=912","title":{"rendered":"The Battle for the Reagan Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking of Lieberman&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Salina Zito writing in the Pittsburg Trib on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pittsburghlive.com\/x\/pittsburghtrib\/opinion\/columnists\/zito\/s_511866.html\">the battle for the &#8220;Reagan Democrats&#8221;:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2005, Howard Dean was the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee and saddled with a party weakened after years of national losses. Determined to turn the tide, he commissioned a massive poll with Cornell Belcher aimed directly at values voters.<\/p>\n<p>After poring over the polling data, Dean recognized a couple of things:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, Democrats did not speak about their faith &#8212; but they should.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Second, when Democrats talked about abortion, they didn&#8217;t emphasize that it should be a last resort. While Democrats needed to protect the rights of women, they also needed to talk about taking care of every child brought into the world &#8212; an aspect on which Republicans are perceived to fall short.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Dean took his poll to the party&#8217;s leadership and to labor leaders. He pointed out that while swing voters <em>do<\/em> share Democrats&#8217; values, the party was not speaking to them in the right way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which is, by the way, true of both parties.\u00a0 But I digress:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dean&#8217;s mission became to link things in a way that makes it more difficult for cultural conservatives to walk away from Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>The challenge for both parties is similar: dealing with the control of the primaries by the parties&#8217; extremes. For Democrats, it is their bloggers who want out of Iraq tomorrow; for Republicans, it is the extreme pro-lifers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One wonders what Ms. Zito means by &#8220;extreme pro-lifers&#8221;, exactly, but there&#8217;s a point there.\u00a0 Some of my worst political memories involve walking into district caucus meetings where half of the crowd were there <em>purely <\/em>to introduce and pass infinite varieties of the same pro-life resolutions &#8211; not that I disagreed\u00a0&#8211; and who were completely illiterate about any other issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If Republicans want to win, they should remember that Reagan, as president, never let the abortion issue define what it meant to be a Republican. He was against it but he never took steps to make it harder to obtain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s a tough pill for many erstwhile Reagan Conservatives to swallow; Reagan was no dogmatist on abortion or, for that matter, Second Amendment issues; he believed the right things in both cases; he just didn&#8217;t push either.\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The more each party must run to its corners and defend what mainstream America considers extreme positions, the harder it becomes to win over Reagan Democrats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which is the conundrum for Republicans; getting both &#8220;Reagan Democrats&#8221; <em>and <\/em>Evangelicals &#8211; both of the &#8220;must-turnouts&#8221; and &#8220;must wins&#8221; for the GOP &#8211; to play nice together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking of Lieberman&#8230; Salina Zito writing in the Pittsburg Trib on the battle for the &#8220;Reagan Democrats&#8221;: In 2005, Howard Dean was the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee and saddled with a party weakened after years of national losses. Determined to turn the tide, he commissioned a massive poll with Cornell Belcher aimed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,20,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-democrats","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}