Can a leaderless army win?  Sun Tzu and a number of other legendary military strategist would say no.

The problem is that despite a transforming political environment that could allow the GOP to pick up dozens of seats, the party has no real leader according to a new Washington Post survey of Republican voters:

Nearly three in 10 of those surveyed expressed no opinion about who in the GOP best reflects the party’s principles or volunteered that no one does.

At the recent Republican Governors Association meetings in Austin, party officials discounted the absence of a single clear leader, arguing that what is most important is for Republicans to resist Obama’s domestic agenda, reaffirm conservative principles and begin to articulate an alternative set of ideas. These officials expect to pick up seats in Congress and win more governorships in next year’s elections, and think new, formidable leaders will emerge from those victories.

The leaderless army of Republicans begin to soul search in a manner that is devisive:

Republicans are now debating whether and how much candidates should be allowed to stray from party doctrine. That issue caused a split in the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich and others backed the Republican candidate and other leaders, including Palin, endorsed the Conservative Party candidate.

We have departed, as a Party, from the teachings of Reagan who reminded us that our 80% friend (someone who we agree on 80% of the issues) is NOT our 20% enemy.  To survive, we have to allow moderate positions on a few things.  The fact is that touting social issues will help us lose more races than we will ever win.

The bottom-line here is that a split base will deal Republican candidates (and even Conservative candidates) a loss everytime.  Independent voters may now be with us, but until we put our house in order we are destined to lose a number of races we should most certainly win.

Tags: Polling Analysis, Republican Party

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 7:07 am and is filed under 2010 Elections, News Commentary, polling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.