As the Republican Governor's Association winds down its Florida meeting, party members wait to see which direction the party will take. Will the part take a more centrist stance, or will it veer sharply to the right to appease the religious base?
If the Republican Party wants to win back the White House within the next few elections, then party leaders need to follow the Charlie Crist model of Republicanism. Crist, the governor of Florida, takes a bi-partisan, which is code word for centrist, view of government. Looking at the election result from 11 days ago, the political winds are blowing in the centrist direction.
This does not mean the party's tenets of limited government and fiscal responsibility should be abandoned. Not at all. But it does mean that the more socially conservative views of the party need to take a back seat to the more traditional tenets. This is not a compromise of principle, but a look at political reality. If the elections of 2006 and 2008 teach us anything, it's that the country has rejected the current look of the GOP. The party needs to update its look and its message if it wants a chance to win national elections again.
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Consider this: If McCain had picked Gov. Crist instead of Gov. Palin to be his running mate, might he have taken Florida? Could he have won the election? Probably not, but my guess is it would have been a closer race. McCain seems to have picked Palin to shore up his right wing appeal, but the American electorate is more centrist than Palin or than Obama.
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