Isn't it about time Republicans start arguing about electability? My memory may be incorrect, but the discussion seems to have been a major part of Democratic debates in every primary election I can remember. Yet up until this point, Republicans have been mostly concerned with purity, whether each candidate has any heresies in their past. That's pretty much the opposite of the electability discussion, a first-person concern as opposed to a third-person concern (do I like this guy, instead of, will other people like this guy). Think about it this way: Eight years ago, Democrats were organizing opposition to Howard Dean, not because he wasn't a pure progressive, but because they thought he'd be unelectable. Some of them even got together and raised money to air this ad in early primary states:
But if there's anyone who's getting anything like that treatment now, it's Mitt Romney, who could be the most electable of the Republicans. Nevertheless, Tim Pawlenty, as the Weekly Standard tells us, is starting to make the case:
And then Pawlenty returns to his electoral appeal. Unlike the other candidates, he ran, governed, and won reelection in a blue state. His blue-collar background would allow him to compete for votes that Republicans don't usually win.
"The question for you is who can do it, who has the fortitude to do it, and who will sell in blue places and purple places. Everybody's going to say, 'I'm the one who can get the independents in the end. I'm the one who can get the conservative Democrats.' But," he said, "I'm the one who actually did it."
Who knows -- maybe the purity discussion is waning, and the electability discussion is waxing. For all of the emphasis on purity up until this point, I'd wager that Republicans will soon realize that no particular policy issue looms larger than their hatred of Barack Obama and their desire to see him gone. As Adam argues, Republican voters -- as opposed to the media figures and activists we hear so much about -- may be more pragmatic than we think.
