Republicans have little chance of defeating President Obama this year and may be better off focusing their efforts on state and congressional elections in November, thousands of conservative activists were told as they kicked off a three-day conference in D.C. Thursday.
“Republicans have dropped the ball on telling the story about Barack Obama,” said Erick Erickson, editor of RedState.com, an influential conservative blog. “I hate to be pessimistic about an election we should win, but it seems like we are setting ourselves up to lose if the economy improves.”
Erickson told the Conservative Political Action Conference that Republicans should shift their energy — and money — away from a presidential contest in which Republicans are conflicted about the candidates. Instead, he said the party should focus on winning elections further down the ballot.
“We can’t just focus on the White House,” Erickson said. “The danger for 2012 is if we run with electability instead of big ideas for reform and then suddenly the top of the ticket doesn’t look that electable.”
Other speakers at the CPAC confab warned that nominating a presidential contender who doesn’t have the backing of the party’s conservative wing would, in the words of one, be “suicide for the Republican Party.”
Still, the party’s on-again, off-again front-runner, Mitt Romney, is failing to generate much enthusiasm among conservatives, pollster Scott Rasmussen said. That has led to a series of mercurial surges by more conservative contenders who, because they have trouble attracting broader support, faded as quickly as they rose. Three have already been forced out of the race. Three others continue to beat up on Romney, with former Sen. Rick Santorum eclipsing Romney on Tuesday after winning nominating contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.
Santorum’s focus on families, faith and conservative social issues resonates much more strongly with conservatives than Romney’s.
“I like Rick Santorum’s message,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of those conservative heartthrobs who quit the race following a series of poor debate performances and slipups, underscored one of conservatives’ biggest gripes with Romney: He isn’t conservative enough or bold enough.
“We can’t tinker our way to victory,” Perry said, referring to Romney as “a lukewarm version” of Obama. “We’ve got to be bold. We’ve got to be clear. We must embrace constitutional conservatism.”
Perry was joined on CPAC’s opening day by two other former presidential contenders, Rep. Michele Bachmann and businessman Herman Cain.
Summing up his own failed run for the nomination, Perry called on his roots at Texas A&M.
“Aggies never lose,” Perry told the crowd, harkening back to his days at Texas A&M University. “We just run out of time. You could say that my presidential campaign just ran out of time.”
After hammering Obama’s handling of the Middle East and other international trouble spots, Bachmann, too, reflected on her bumpy ride on the campaign trail, one filled with factual gaffes.
“Running for president of the United States,” she said, “is one series of humiliations after another.”
