Please check out this opinion piece in week's Denver Post from a Colorado Republican-turned-independent who spurned all GOP candidates this year out of his disgust for the Republican Party's beholdence to the Religious Right. Here's a piece:
After a resounding electoral defeat, in which voters in this once-red state rejected Republicans McCain, Schaffer, and Musgrave, the Colorado Republican Party will undoubtedly be asking themselves, "Why did we lose?"
I want to let them know that they lost the vote of many former supporters (including myself) because they have chosen to embrace the Religious Right.
I voted Republican in 1996, 2000, and 2004. I believe in limited government, individual rights, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms - positions that one normally associates with Republicans.
But I didn't vote for a single Republican in 2008. I've become increasingly alienated by the Republicans" embrace of the religious "social conservative" agenda, including attempts to ban abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and gay marriage.
I have little doubt that this gentleman is not alone, in Colorado and elsewhere. The Republican Party has over-reached, and there are many conservatives who have been turned off by the party's policies which intrude into peoples' personal lives as well as the GOP's over-reliance on obtaining approval from divisive figures like James Dobson and Tony Perkins. This alienation of libertarians away from the GOP may be one of the key storylines coming out of the election and perhaps impacting the nation's political landscape in years to come.
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Count me as one of these folks. I am too socially liberal to ever be accepted by the GOP party for a national ticket, even though the party is supposedly about less govt interference in people's lives.
Did you read Romney's op ed on the Big 3? He's starting his 2012 campaign already.
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