Patrick Ruffini Compares GOP and Dem Voter Bases

November 30, 2004

Check out PatrickRuffini’s site, where Ruffini, the webmaster for the Bush-Cheney ’04 presidential campaign, gives us the most recent Bush popular vote total (Hat Tip: Lorie Byrd at Polipundit), and excellent commentary on Joe Trippi’s (Screaming Howard Dean’s Campaign Manager and the first guy I debated on national TV on Hannity and Colmes in 1998 over Clinton impeachment issues) theory that Dems need to return to their base to ensure future victories. You can read Ruffini’s analysis in toto at the above link, but here are my favorite lines:

If you’re a Republican, and you go to your base, here’s what that means: you’re opposed to gay marriage, tough on terror, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment. If you’re a Democrat, it means this: you’re for gay marriage, anti-war, pro-choice, and for stricter gun control. Now, I ask you, which is the more appealing position?… Republicans didn’t win because they went to their base; they won because the positions of their base are much more palatable to the political center, especially so in serious times with well-defined choices.

It’s another way of saying — as I’ve been saying — that this really isn’t an equally divided nation; that a sizable majority of voters are basically conservative and that if it hadn’t been for the mainstream media doing its best to shield Kerry’s liberalism from public scrutiny, President Dubya would have won in a landslide. (OK, Ruffini didn’t quite say all that, but close)

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