Word: rightfulness
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...Voters as a whole trusted him more than his Democratic opponent on everything from fixing the roads to strengthening the economy. Once he had that trust, Democrats were unable to get voters to see him as frighteningly conservative, although they tried to make hay out of a hard-right master's thesis McDonnell wrote in 1989. (See pictures from 60 years of election-night drama...
...Jersey, Republican Chris Christie - who beat a primary candidate running to his right - also won independent voters by big margins. The state has not given a majority of its votes to a Republican candidate for governor in 24 years. Christie didn't break 50% either, in part because of a third-party candidate but also because he ran a vague campaign that left voters unconvinced that he offered real solutions to the state's serious economic and budgetary woes. He won anyway because voters thought the Democratic incumbent, Jon Corzine, had already failed to deal with those problems...
What these races suggest is that Republicans' principal problem in recent elections has not been that they are too far right, or - as a lot of conservatives like to think - not far right enough. After all, voters turned on both moderate and conservative Republicans in the late Bush years. The problem has instead been that voters have not thought Republicans of any stripe had answers to their most pressing concerns. Addressing those concerns, rather than repositioning itself along the ideological spectrum, is the party's main challenge. (See 10 elections that changed America...
Most of the Republican presidential contenders - yes, I'm afraid the 2012 race is starting up already - are not running hard to the right, at least so far. Mitt Romney has refrained from throwing himself behind the momentary passions of the party's base, for example, by staying out of the conservative-moderate fight in New York. Tim Pawlenty felt obliged to endorse Hoffman, but he has successfully governed a Midwestern state that has a strong liberal tradition. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has been playing to the base and has the low poll numbers with moderates to prove...
...usual in the constant duels between Chávez and Uribe, the truth lies somewhere between their left-right bluster. Both could stand to listen more to their countrymen who have voted with their feet. "I want to die in my country," says Fredys Villanueva, but not if he first can't find a job and affordable health care under Uribe. At the same time, says Castro, Chávez's "Robin Hood-type" government and its promotion of "social resentment" threaten to keep alienating a large swath of his country. As things are, however, it's doubtful that such...