On March 2, 1980, the New York Times reported, "Ford Declares Reagan Can't Win; Invites GOP to Ask Him to Run." Then in 1984, outspoken conservative Ronald Reagan won reelection by carrying 49 states and 525 electoral votes. Reagan won campaigning with "bold colors – no pale pastels." Reagan's success in elections was built on Phyllis Schlafly's call to offer voters "A Choice Not an Echo."
Now there is a new push for Republicans to reach out to "suburban" voters. This movement is heavily funded and well-established in Northern Virginia, calling itself the Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition. The central assumption (never proven or examined) is that suburban voters won't vote for conservative Republicans, so the GOP must offer watered-down, Democrat-lite messaging and Republican candidates in "the suburbs." (If you suspect that "the suburbs" is never defined, your antennae are switched on.)
In March 2018, Virginia's status-quo Republicans lost control of the Fairfax County Republican Committee to conservative Tim Hannigan. So they suddenly developed extremely sophisticated and expensive websites, webinars, seminars, breakfast meetings, etc. – in other words, all of the things status-quo Republicans failed to do when they were running Fairfax's GOP. They began to spread the narrative that a conservative message won't work in the suburbs.
Voters just won't elect conservative Republican candidates. That has been the core belief of the Republican establishment since long before the 1964 GOP presidential showdown between libertarian Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. The stunning thing is that this assumption never dies despite overwhelming evidence that conservative Republicans do better than liberal Republicans in elections.
Now, if the elites have a negative perception of conservatives, their assumption makes sense. If an establishment Republican hears the sound of banjos and has flashbacks from the movie "Deliverance" when we speak of conservatives, of course they want to show: "Oh, I am not like those Republicans. I am different." They may think that tea party meetings feature snake handlers.
For decades, they were called "Rockefeller Republicans." They are garden party or country club Republicans who want a GOP that does not offend, that they can be proud to say they are involved with when around their liberal and politically agnostic friends. As Randal Graves explains at the Delaware Insider, "The question the GOP endlessly seeks to answer is this: how can we please the Democrats today?"
But that term is outdated. Today, we might call them Gerald Ford or Mitt Romney Republicans. They passionately cling to the status quo and fear change.
Just like today, in 1964 the elites wanted an unthreatening, empty suit for president. Goldwater actually took, like, positions on things and proposed to actually do stuff if elected to the White House. Goldwater wanted to actually change things. That made the establishment clutch their pearls and collapse on the fainting couch. (Obviously, I embellish to explain very quickly, but the motivations should be noticed.)
So, do we really want to have – prominently advertised – one face for Republicans in the suburbs and a second Republican face for rural communities? (The self-proclaimed political experts have implicitly written off the cities.) Is that really the best insiders can come up with? Should the Republican Party openly have two faces?
There are more conservative voters in suburban Fairfax County in total numbers than in almost any rural Virginia County. Fairfax alone is bigger than eight states. In fact, much of the entire national leadership and staff personnel of conservative organizations lives and votes in Fairfax or Loudoun Counties, commuting to D.C.
Virginia Republican candidates have been doing poorly in the suburbs – but could that be because Republican elites just don't know how to win elections?
When Tim Hannigan took over he found that about half of all Fairfax precincts had no GOP precinct captain. Many are just inactive names on paper. But we need an explanation that does not require establishment Republicans to take responsibility for past failures.
Let's say you ran a national franchise. To steal from my beloved economics professor at the University of Florida, let's say you run "Burger President." Sales of hamburgers by local franchises in North Carolina are excellent. But sales are poor in Virginia. Would you assume that Virginians don't like hamburgers? Or would you explore the possibility that Burger President franchise owners in Virginia don't know how to sell hamburgers?
Why would anyone give up their Saturday to volunteer for a party that stands for nothing? Here is the iron test: Would a retired man give up a Saturday morning hiking or fishing with his grandkids to get a candidate elected? If there is not a dime's worth of difference between the Republican and the Democrat, why would someone help a liberal Republican instead of building memories with his grandchildren?
The establishment needs volunteers to win elections. But volunteers need a reason to donate their time. The elites need to persuade conservative grassroots volunteers to do unpaid work. The challenge is to get conservative Republicans to elect liberals who enact liberal policies.
In May 2006, Christine O'Donnell first started to consider running for office. She exclaimed to me that Republicans in Delaware "aren't even trying to win! They just want to look good losing!" In 2010 Christine lost by a 17% margin. But the Republican who ran in the cycle before Christine lost by a 41% margin. The Republican candidate after her lost by a 37% margin. Sounds like the conservatives were on to something. That was moving in the right direction. In 2008, Christine got about the same percentage of the vote in Delaware against Joe Biden for Senate as John McCain and Sarah Palin got against Barack Obama and Joe Biden on the same ballot on the same day.
Phyllis Schlafly's call of "A Choice Not an Echo" still rings strong today. Why won't our leaders learn from experience?
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