Four Reasons People Are Abandoning the GOP

08 Jul, 2013 by Dave Blount

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People aren’t bailing out of the Republican Party to go over to the dark side. They are leaving because thanks to the ongoing infestation of the party by liberal statists, they don’t see a fundamental difference between the GOP and the Democrats. The Lesser Evil argument that has persuaded some of us to vote for the likes of John McCain is no longer cutting it:

A new study by the Frontier Lab, a conservative market research group, found that Republican voters who leave the party do so because they are tired of being told to vote Republican as the “lesser of two evils.” The study, “Switching Behavior: Modeling disaffiliation from the Republican brand,” is published on the group’s website and applies scientific methods of qualitative research to the GOP’s most urgent problem.

Never mind the RNC’s post-Romney “autopsy,” which was prepared by the same pointy-headed, unprincipled consultants who have been steering the GOP into oblivion.

Anne Sorock, author of the Frontier Lab study, writes that the RNC autopsy failed to provide “meaningful insights about how the Republican Party’s adherents are interacting with the brand as it stands.”

She found four main reasons for the growing disaffection:

One was the rejection of the “lesser of two evils” argument — the argument that voters had to support a bad Republican because the Democratic candidate would invariably be worse. …

A second event was a loss of hope in the Republican Party — a sentiment connected to the feeling that the party could no longer deliver on its promises because leaders had abandoned their principles. …

A third reason that Republicans had decided to detach themselves from the party label was “affiliation with a new community” — primarily the Tea Party, Sorock says, which offers the kind of “camaraderie” that the GOP itself no longer provides its members. …

Finally, a fourth reason Republicans identified for leaving was “perceived betrayal by the GOP establishment.”

It’s not time for the GOP to roll over and put its hooves in the air just yet.

The good news for Republicans, Sorock says, is that disaffiliation can be reversed if Republicans strive to create a sense of community around shared principles and abandon the “two evils” argument — without attacking weak candidates.

One of two things will happen: (1) principled conservatives who truly believe in limited government and American exceptionalism will take over the party, the way socialists took over the Democrat Party; or (2) the Republican Party will be replaced by a new party representing Tea Party values.

The fork in the road is directly ahead. If (1) is going to happen, it will have to be very soon.