Voters distrust 'diluted' GOP

Chad Groening and Jody Brown - OneNewsNow - 11/10/2008 8:00:00 AM

A conservative non-profit organization has completed a study that shows the liberal tsunami on Election Day 2008 was not because the country wanted to move radically to the left, but because voters wanted to punish Republicans for abandoning conservative principles.

The American Issues Project (AIP) has released its report known as "Issue Autopsy '08," which came from a survey of swing-state voters in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. AIP president Ed Martin says the survey indicates that despite the disastrous showing by the GOP, the country is not really that liberal. He says the "shellacking" delivered to the Republican Party last week reveals the party is "diluted" to the point where the American people do not really know what the GOP stands for anymore.
 
"The voters -- the people who talked about who they were and what the principles and issues were for them in America -- are still sort of classically center-right people," Martin explains. "Their principles are smaller government, controlling spending, lower taxes, government competent when it is acting."
 
Martin admits that it does not make any sense, for example, that voters who support lower taxes would trust the Democratic Party, which has consistently been on the other side of the issues. "I think people can vote for a Democratic presidential candidate thinking that he is going to be all about lower taxes because of the rhetoric and the way things have spun out," says the AIP president. "And in this campaign, voters came to distrust the Republican brand enough that they were able to be persuaded by the other party."

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Results from our related poll

Which political party do you feel best currently represents

'conservative' principles?

 
According to the AIP survey, more than three-fourths of conservative voters agreed that after taking control of Congress in 1994, the GOP failed to live up to the promise it made to reform government and clean up corruption in Washington. Almost the same percentage agreed with the statement: "The Republican Party used to stand for keeping government spending under control, but not anymore."
 
Another 30 percent said the GOP has been incompetent and is not getting the job done; and 28 percent said the party has forgotten its principles and lost its way.
 
Martin says the American Issues Project will be very active during the 2009 legislative session -- a time when he says "a liberal-dominated Congress and a far-left administration will set their sights on a massive expansion in the role of the federal government, in everything from healthcare and labor law to taxes and spending."

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