I have a confession to make: I never, ever would have imagined, much less predicted, that the successor politicoideological label by which I could accurately be referred after "Reagan Republican," if any, would be.....Scarborough Republican. I'm still getting the heebee-jeebees from the realization.
But the more I re-read his answer to Jim Geraghty's question, the more sense it makes, at least on this key topic:
Jim: As you no doubt are aware, in the world of Twitter and in comment sections of websites, there are some folks who are a wee bit skeptical of your assessment of the Republican party. So I wanted to give you a chance to give your elevator pitch, your short pitch, to someone who's skeptical of the criticisms you made of Republicans recently, and why should they listen to you and why the ideas you're articulating would move the party in a better direction.
Scarborough: (laughing) Yeah, why should they listen to me?
Why in the world would anyone in the Republican party listen to me? Because they have absolutely no idea how to win elections! You know, I was only the first Republican to get elected in my [House] district since 1873. I started out a campaign against a 16-year incumbent. Everybody said I was going to lose. Newt Gingrich said I was too conservative for my own district. He and the entire Washington establishment threw all of their weight and power and K Street behind my moderate pro-choice opponent. And I ended up winning the election with 62 percent of the vote. And how did I do it? I ran as a conservative, pro-life, pro-gun Republican. I wasn't extreme on any of the issues. I talked about economics. I talked about tax reform. I talked about getting rid of the income tax and reforming the tax code, going to a tax system that actually encouraged hard work and economic development. I'd get a lot of people coming up to me saying that they disagreed with me on a lot of issues, that I was more conservative than they were, but they liked me and they voted for me because they knew I was going to go to Washington and I was going to fight for them.
You can trace a straight line from what I said on the campaign trail in 1994 in northwest Florida, to what I have said throughout my congressional career, what I voted in thousands and thousands of congressional votes, what I said on 'Scarborough Country' every night -- in 2003, I started warning about George W. Bush's big government spending ways -- in early 2003, everybody else was turning a blind eye to it. In 2004, I wrote a book, Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day. I predicted that big-government Republicanism was going to lead to the destruction of the GOP majority and wreck the economy.
The only people who were talking that way in 2004 were Tom Coburn, myself, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. In 2009, I wrote another book, where I said the same exact things I said years back.
Over the past several years, I've been branded this RINO, for basically calling the people that our party keeps putting up for elections 'amateurs.' I was right when I criticized Mitt Romney, and I was attacked for being a RINO. I was right when I kept saying to people like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain and Rick Perry and a lot of these other contenders that were getting a lot of national media attention, I said they're amateurs, they're not going to be able to win a national general election. I said time and time again, on air, that this happens to us every four years, where we get amateurs. They run on the extreme right. I don't...mean ideologically, I mean temperamentally, in a way that offends voters in all the swing areas we need to win, whether it's the suburbs of Philly, the I-4 corridor [in Florida] -- areas Republicans need to win in order to win national elections.
In spite of all these predictions that always turn out to be right, I'm somehow a RINO because I'm being the Cassandra here, who has been saying the same . . . exact . . . thing! I almost swore!
"Morning Joe's" point here is about style and strategy, not ideology. The "fire-breather" style of a Ted Cruz may be just want Tea Partiers want to hear, but Tea Partiers aren't a majority of the American electorate, any more than the Nutroots are a majority of it on the other side. Which is why it is precisely the least informed, least interested, most apathetic, and, therefore, most easily manipulated - "swing" voters - that decide the winners of national elections. It shouldn't be that way - look at what's happening now and you'll know why - but it is. Consequently, a candidate's tone, how he or she communicates or "sells" ideas, matters as much as the ideas themselves - especially for conservatives, since our candidates have to fight their way through a hostile media blockade. It doesn't mean a GOP nominee has to "go moderate" or "tack left"; it just means what your average cardiologist tells the average post-middle age male patient: avoid red meat, and above all, don't come across as angry. Scarborough cites none other than President Reagan as his example; the Gipper was always sunny, optimistic, the "happy warrior," which made his occasional badassery all the more effective. And that, come to think of it, is entirely consistent with his promulgation of the "11th Commandment": "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican".
Yes, for the record, Scorborough is pro-gun background checks, and yes, he's still on MSNBCCCP, so calling me "Morning Jim" would still be a stretch. But he's right about the GOP nominating "amateurs" (Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle from 2010 come to mind) and he is, regrettably, also correct about moderating not our ideas, but the tone in which they are championed. Whether his advice will be heeded or not is unseverably proportional to the degree to which the Right wants to win in 2014 and especially 2016.
If, you know, there are any more elections.
See? Morning Joe would think that was loony.
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