Much of what has filled up time on the 24-hour cable news channels since November has been a discussion of what the Republican Party needs to change in order to become competitive once again. Many of the debates attempt to study strategy, looking out how the party can frame its appeal and ideology in ways that will be more attractive to more voters. These efforts assume there is nothing wrong or unappealing about that ideology. Advocates of winning through better strategy believe that the average citizen is slightly or somewhat "right of center" in their political ideology. Thus, they conclude, the message is not the problem. Must be the messenger.
There are, however, important power centers in the party that reject the notion that inept messaging was the problem. They see efforts to repackage Republicanism in more attractive terms as being insidious attempts to alter the ideology. Trying to show how their worldview can appeal to people who have not been voting with them is viewed by these party purists as caving in on ideology. They believe that the true road to success lies in going the opposite direction. They want even more ideological purity. And this includes both economic conservatism and social conservatism. One who wants small, efficient government but is open-minded about abortion is simply not welcome on the Republican reservation. "Log Cabin" Republicans simply cannot be accepted, no matter how pro-business they might be. Purity (of ideology) is essential to finding their way out of the wilderness and back to the Promised Land.
What is sort of left unsaid, but to me would be essential, is how these Republican power-brokers intend to succeed given this apparent dichotomy. In order to win as a "pure" ideological party they will need to devise some kind of evangelical message to win over those moderates they have been purging and shunning. If the specific issues they wish to live or die on are that important to them, then they must figure out how to convince people who don't share those views on those issues, and are in fact seemingly moving the other direction.
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what is interesting, and what i would love to see this entry in a larger, historical narrative, say in terms of research and articles, as a survey of the correlations between prevailing attitudes of voters and party ideologies as they are espoused by election winners - throughout all the different economic and social changes/periods/shifts of the entire 20 and 21st centuries.
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