Looking to 2010, GOP focuses on fiscal restraint

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele is working behind the scenes to unify state GOP leaders around an anti-spending, small-government theme for the 2010 midterm elections, seeking to shunt family values to second-tier status in pursuit of independent voters whose economic fears cost Democrats in Tuesday’s elections.

Trying to build on victories in the two biggest races, moderate Republican state party chairmen from liberal-leaning blue states said fiscal conservatism would fuel future wins, and that “good candidates” are now eager to run. Even one of the party’s “rock stars,” former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, may be more willing to take the plunge for the New York gubernatorial race next year, New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox told The Washington Times.

“The keys issues are fiscal conservatism” to fight the Democrats’ “huge deficits and spending,” California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring told The Times in a conference call with Mr. Cox and three other state chairmen. “If we stick to that message, we are going to be united.”

The party chairmen said they were encouraged by Mr. Steele to rally around fiscal conservatism more than family values - a move clearly designed to tap “tea party” activist outrage over spending and lock down their support heading into next year’s races.

Mr. Steele and other party leaders are looking to prevent intraparty battles like the one in upstate New York that cost Republicans a House seat they had held for more than a century.

Massachusetts GOP Chairman Jennifer A. Nassour and GOP leaders see independent, moderate voters who swing elections as ripe and want to ensure the Republican Party is best positioned to pick off their support.

“If I had to focus on the issues we should run on next year,” they would be “spending, jobs, big government and taxes. That’s what people are talking about,” Mrs. Nassour said.

Exit polls showed that independent voters, who powered President Obama and Democrats to victory in 2008, rushed to Republicans on Tuesday by a 2-to-1 margin, delivering a landslide victory to Republican Robert F. McDonnell over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds in Virginia’s gubernatorial contest and upending incumbent New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Republican Chris Christie won the solidly blue state.

The nagging question for the party is whether an emphasis on economic issues would spark a backlash from the two conservative groups within the RNC - the Republican National Conservative Caucus and the RNC Steering Committee, both of which have a number of social and religious conservatives.

Mr. Nehring insisted it would not.

“We remain a broad-based party,” he said. “Some deal with spending and tax issues, others foreign-policy and national-security issues.”

He said candidates would be free “to focus on those issues of greatest concern” to their districts or states, including issues that speak to moral and traditional family values. However, abortion - officially opposed in the national GOP’s platform - and same-sex marriage were not mentioned by any of the five state GOP chairmen on the call.

Democrats on Capitol Hill said they don’t see the election as a judgment on President Obama, but vowed to reconnect with the young voters and independents who lifted them in 2008 but didn’t turn out last week.

It was a stark contrast to Mr. Obama’s historic 2008 victory in Republican-leaning Virginia, which was widely heralded as the start of a Democratic wave sweeping the country.

Still, top Democrats pointed to victory in New York’s 23rd District as the story of the off-year election. They are hopeful that the sparring within the GOP in upstate New York is a harbinger of future opportunities for Democrats in otherwise-red districts.

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