Bickering Republicans cast about for answers

When Washington state voters opened their mail-in ballots and stepped into voting booths, they had this choice for governor:

• Christine Gregoire
(Prefers Democratic Party)
• Dino Rossi
(Prefers G.O.P. Party)

Rossi was taking as few chances as he could. After a survey suggested that as many as 12 percent of the state’s registered voters didn’t know that the “G.O.P. Party” and the Republican Party were the same thing, there was no way the Republican was going to call himself a Republican.

Political analysts said Rossi’s decision was a smart one in a historically Democratic state where President Bush is highly unpopular and where the Republicans’ nominee to succeed Bush, John McCain, ran 15 to 20 percentage points behind in pre-election polling. Rossi ended up losing, but, as he boasted in his concession speech, he ran well ahead of McCain.

The Washington race exemplified what was true in many areas of the country on Tuesday: The national ticket of McCain and Sarah Palin may be getting most of the blame for Republicans’ losses, but at the local and state levels, Republicans say their problems run deeper.

Top Republicans echoed the assessment of the National Review, a leading organ of conservative Republicanism, which thundered in a post-election editorial that “the public has ... clearly rejected the Republican Party in its present configuration.”

“Sometimes, I think we’ve forgotten what we stand for,” said Stewart Iverson, who resigned Thursday as chairman of the Republican Party in Iowa, where Barack Obama easily won the presidential vote, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin was re-elected by an even bigger margin and Democrats consolidated control of the Legislature.

“We’re going to have to look at rebuilding the Republican Party,” Iverson said.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., likewise called for his party to “embrace a bold new direction.”

“We have got to clean up, reform and rebuild the Republican Party before we can ask Americans to trust us again,” he said.

‘An impeachment of Republicans’
Exactly how to rebuild is the issue. Party activists were divided into two camps: those who said Republicans should restore their identity by embracing core conservative values and those who said Republicans had lost touch with the voters by embracing core conservative values.

An msnbc.com-NBC News special report Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. The following NBC stations contributed to this report: KING of Seattle; KNBC of Los Angeles; KNDU of South Bend, Ind.; KPRC of Houston; WAGT of Augusta, Ga.; WHO of Des Moines, Iowa; WLWT of Cincinnati; WNDU of South Bend, Ind.; and WYFF of Greenville, S.C.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican hailed by the American Conservative Union as the most conservative governor in America, argued that the party had lost its way by abandoning fiscal restraint. Sanford opposed Bush’s bailout of Wall Street and even traveled to Washington a week before the election to testify before Congress in opposition to a proposal for a second bailout.

Republican weakness, he said, “really is an impeachment of Republicans not walking their own walk.”

Ted Sporer, chairman of the Republican Party in Polk County, Iowa, said Republicans had “bottomed out.” He called on the party to return to its limited-government roots and “the concept of morality.”

"You know, doing the same thing with the same people and expecting different results — what do you think is going to happen?” Sporer asked. “Operational insanity.”

Chris Riley, chairman of the Republican Party in St. Joseph County, Ind., said moderates and independents — who exit polls show voted strongly for Obama — would not be turned off by a Republican swing back to the right. In fact, he said, moderate and center-right voters would respect the party only if it keeps “fighting as the Republican Party.”

“What we really need is sound economic policy — de-emphasize taxes,” Riley said. “And when we do that, people are going to come back, and they’re going to see that the Republican Party is the answer.”

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