The Loss In The Mississippi Special Election Was Because Conservatives Didn’t Show Up

15 May, 2008 by John Hawkins

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As I’ve said time and time again, one of biggest mistakes that the RINOs in DC make is that they buy, hook line and sinker, into the whole, “Who else are they going to vote for?” fallacy.

In other words, they believe that they don’t have to work to keep their base happy. Instead, they can toss a few scraps to conservatives and spend the bulk of their time reaching out to independents and still win elections.

If you want to see how flawed that line of reasoning really is, just take a look at the turnout from the special election in Mississippi’s First Congressional District.

What you’ll note is that there was no surge in the number of Democratic voters. To the contrary, the GOP lost that election because the bottom fell out on the Republican side. The voters are still there; they’re just so dispirited by the lousy performance of the GOP that they couldn’t rouse themselves to go to the polls.

This is where the Republican Party is killing itself. The top political priority of Republicans should be keeping conservatives happy and then, once that’s done, they can try to reach out to independents in ways that won’t aggravate their biggest supporters.

It’s because they’ve put the cart before the horse by focusing on independents while paying scant attention to what conservatives want that the GOP is in so much trouble.