There has been much hand wringing among Democrats since the election about our failure to win red states, but I want to ask the question that no one else is: Why can't Republicans win over blue state voters?
Election after election, voters in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, upper Midwest and the entire west coast reliably vote for the Democratic nominee. It doesn't matter that their party has now lost all but 2 elections in the past 24 years, the GOP message just isn't getting through to the voters of Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Minnesota, California or Washington to name a few.
You would think that the GOP would be trying woo these states. After all, all the country's major population and financial centers are in the blue states. Not to mention that the blue states tend to be more educated than their red counterparts.
Its true, an occasional Republican can win in statewide races in these blue states, but its only by running to the center or as an outsider to the blue state Dem establishment that these Republicans can even have a hope of winning a blue state.
Here are some helpful suggestions the GOP should take under advisement if they want to win the blue states in 2008:
- Republicans need to concede the gun issue to the Democrats. As long as violence persists on the streets of New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, the GOP is in a lose-lose situation with urban voters. The Republicans can't expect urban voters to take them seriously when arguing that uzis and other forms of assault weapons are needed for hunting.
- The GOP needs to stop invoking God in their rhetoric! Its not that blue state voters aren't religious. They just don't like to hear about religion from their politicians. Remember GOoPers, the constitutuion calls for a seperation of church and state. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can start tallying up those EVs in New England.
- Support gay marriage. The gay populations in San Francisco, New York and Chicago are huge. The Dems have been taking the gay vote for granted for far too long, if your 2008 nominee, Bill Frist for example, became a champion of gay rights, you can bet much like the southern strategy gave you the racist vote for the past generation, the gay vote would be yours for a long time to come.
- Tackle corporate criminals. The manufacturing base in the upper Midwest is crumbling and they don't think the GOP platform on the economy is very credible. They watch as their companies post record profits and then close their factories and ship jobs overseas. If the GOP wants to win these voters, they need to get tough on greedy CEOs like Ken Lay and close loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas.
- Stop starting wars without good reason. The highly educated voters of the blue states aren't likely to take your warnings of "grave threats" very seriously when no WMDs turn up and you go into countries without any plans to win the peace. Blue state voters aren't pacifists, they just want to know that there is solid evidence backing up any decision to send troops into harm's way. You can call them stubborn if you like, but if you want their vote you need to pander to their "reality based" ways.
Taken together, these steps should be a winning strategy for the GOP to form a 50-state majority for the next several generations.