By Laura Ingraham
I received a call today from a reporter asking me if Mitt Romney lost because of talk radio and the Tea Party and whether the GOP had to soften its views to appeal to women and to Latinos. Funny, the media pushed that same narrative after the GOP's 2006 midterm wipe-out and after McCain's 2008 loss to Obama.
Let me just tell you, if anything, Mitt Romney distanced himself from much of the talk radio world. He made only three brief appearances on my radio show over the past year. And his campaign was livid when I had the nerve to ask the Governor, whom I endorsed by the way in 2008, how he planned to win the election if the economy showed signs of improvement.
The fact is talk radio continues to thrive while moderate Republicans like John McCain and to some extent Mitt Romney continue to lose presidential elections. And while the Tea Party has backed some terrible candidates... Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin and Christine O'Donnell, it also made the 2010 GOP route possible. Grass roots conservatives helped elect Senators Marco Rubio in Florida, Ted Cruz in Texas, and this time Deb Fisher in that Nebraska senate race.
Where is the evidence that pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage or pro- amnesty but fiscally conservative candidates are the solution to the GOP's problem? Moderates like Scott Brown and Charlie Summers just lost their senate races in Massachusetts and Maine. Both blue states. Would their type of Republican have won in conservative red states? Of course not. Until more liberal Republicans start winning their races, why should they dictate the terms of a new GOP agenda?
Yes, Republicans of course need to attract more single women and Latinos. But pandering isn't the answer. Good policy and good politics is. I don't think it's any harder to convince more Hispanics or more single women to be conservative than it was to convince let's say Irish Catholics or Italian immigrants who are New Deal or JFK Democrats to become conservatives during the Reagan area.
If you believe like I do that conservative social and economic policies are the best hope for the nation, then abandoning your positions to try to become more popular is a path to complete irrelevance. Did Barack Obama moderate his views after the 2010 midterms? Did he roll back parts of ObamaCare? Did he stop green energy subsidies?
Nope, instead he aggressively pursued his liberal agenda by executive order and with new smart messaging and he won re-election.
And that's "The Memo."
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox