Weekend Opinionator: Dead Right?

By Tobin Harshaw
NYT

Anyone not living under a rock is aware that it’s been a bad couple of years for Republicans — and when you’re on a losing streak, it’s only natural that heads will roll. Hence the Politico’s report yesterday that “newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has requested the resignations of the entire R.N.C. staff and signaled a dramatic turnover at the party organization.”

Now, the Opinionator doesn’t claim any special political prescience, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the turnover of 100 or so jobs at party headquarters is going to bring the G.O.P.’ers back in from the desert. So, what are conservatives talking about out in the sere wasteland?

The party leadership, in the person of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, wants to maintain principles (assuming Marc Ambinder’s transcript is correct, which is a pretty safe assumption):

The first task, in my view, is to find the voters who’ve left the party. As we do this, the temptation for some will be to run from our principles or to dilute our message. I think that’s a temptation we need to resist. These people were Republican for a reason. You don’t get them back by pretending to something else. And you certainly don’t gain voters by running away from the ones that are most loyal. But it’s clear our message isn’t getting out to nearly as many people as it should. We need to give voters who’ve turned away a reason to take another look. And that takes a lot of work.

(More here.)