Published by Ryan Sager July 23rd, 2008
in Misc. Elephantitis.
The Washington Times picks up the trend in a story yesterday: Political showdown in West.
It’s an argument I’ve been putting forward for a while (OK, ad nauseum), but now an actual presidential campaign is trying to capitalize on the fact that the Interior West has become a swing region:
Republicans, with few exceptions in recent decades, have become accustomed to sweeping the Plains and Mountain States from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande - President Bush carried all of them in 2004 and all but one in 2000.
However, the Illinois Democrat is aggressively challenging Sen. John McCain in at least six of them, including Republican strongholds New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Montana and North and South Dakota, where polls show the race between the two rivals is close or in a dead heat.
I’m actually interested to see this strategy extend to North and South Dakota. They don’t fit neatly into my Interior West thesis — in that my general impression is these states are culturally conservative at a level on par with the rest of the Midwest (as opposed to the more libertarian Interior West). But maybe it’s worth some further consideration.
If you happen to be in Minneapolis this Thursday, July 24, America’s Future Foundation will be holding a panel in advance of the GOP convention hitting the city in September:
“AFF on the Road” next stop: Minneapolis, Minnesota! On Thursday, July 24th America’s Future Foundation will host “The Pre-convention Debate: Has the GOP gotten the message?” just a few short months before the Republican convention.
Coming off special election losses and into its convention, has the GOP gotten the message? Conservatives and libertarians have demanded that Republicans live up to their limited government principles. And yet, many Republicans in Congress voted for further increases in spending in the recent 2008 Farm Bill. At the convention, does McCain and the GOP leadership have what it takes to pull the party together around a program of limited government? Or, are the concerns of the conservative and libertarian “base” irrelevant as Obama and McCain vie for independent-minded swing voters? Join America’s Future Foundation to find out.
I’ll be on the panel, along with Jeff Larson, CEO of the Minneapolis St. Paul 2008 Host Committee for the 2008 Republican convention and founding partner of Feather, Larson & Synhorst.
UPDATE (7/23/08): The panel also includes David Freddoso, of National Review, and Annette Meeks, founder and president of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota.
Recent Comments