It is the LEFT that must moderate obfuscate its views in order to attract the middle and win over independents. They've been lying about their true aims to win national elections ever since I started paying attention. The establishment of both parties would have us believe that the same applies to Republicans. This is a lie.
Conservatives win when they articulate conservatism. The "tack to the middle" strategy has been a failure every time it has been tried.
Reagan articulated conservatism and asked the rest of the nation to join him. He won two landslides.
George HW Bush articulated conservatism and won, then betrayed it, and lost.
Dole Tacked to the middle, and lost.
George W. Bush / Karl Rove invented "Compassionate Conservatism" - articulating fiscal and social conservative principles that could be sold to the base with populist appeal, while offering bigger and more powerful federal government as a solution to a myriad of issues.
Bush lost the popular vote, and Rove's "carve 'em up" electoral vote strategy delivered the Presidency, at great, great cost to the party and the nation.
But my point here isn't to rehash Bush, but to say that George W. Bush told us exactly who and what he was, from square one. He didn't present himself as one thing, and then morph into something else for the general election. He remained consistent through two elections and two terms as president. He wore his agenda on his sleeve, as it were.
But his appeal to the middling independents that won the White House was Karl Rove's cynical strategy to divide the American people for the benefit of a big government GOP machine. They would have us believe that only appealing to the middle can win, when the reality is that appealing to the middle was just a strategy to get a semi-conservative elected. Rove's divisive electoral map was designed to be successful winning the presidency on a semi-conservative platform, and it worked. Rove's strategy worked the way Bush needed it to work to get a semi-conservative elected, but that doesn't mean Bush was elected because the country wanted a semi-conservative. Now the intelligentsia would have us believe that only a middling Republican can get elected. Hogwash.
So for any of these GOP candidates (Romney and his supporters) to rest on the notion that the GOP nominee must be someone who can appeal to the independent middle on mushy, unprincipled ground, is a lie. You dump the Rove strategy, look at how you can divide the electoral map to get a conservative elected, and find a candidate who can appeal to that independent middle on conservative ground.
