How many times have we all heard the conventional wisdom that the November election will be determined by the Independents?

The standard TV talking-head mantra is that since the country is roughly evenly split, it is the 20% (or so) in the middle that determine election outcomes.  Makes sense, no?  Therefore the Republicans need to field a candidate who is not too extreme, one who can “reach across the aisle”, and one who speaks in soothing, dulcet tones and avoids harsh words like “incompetent”, “socialist”, “left-wing”, and “radical”.   That should avoid offending those Independents, and consequently they’ll vote Republican.  Right?

I used to think so.  I don’t anymore.

Perhaps if the 2012 election were actually a census, that conventional wisdom might be valid.  But a census means 100% participation, and an election is not a census.  An election is actually a poll with self-selected participants.  That’s why winning an election depends so much on the voter turnout among the party’s base.

I first came to believe in a turnout-based strategy when I participated in the 2010 campaign of my own Congressman.  The strategy he gave us was simple: just boost the turnout of our own party as much as possible.  It wasn’t about wooing Independents or converting voters from the other party to our side.  It was about getting our own voters to just show up at the polls or mail in their ballots.  The strategy worked.  My Congressman beat the incumbent by a wide margin.

The 1996 Dole v. Clinton and 2008 McCain v. Obama campaigns were all about the conventional wisdom of moderation.  Remember when McCain threatened to fire any member of his staff if he or she dared utter Barack Obama’s middle name “Hussein” in public? Remember his soothing talk about all his “old friends across the aisle”?  Remember when he opposed drilling in Alaska because that area was so “pristine”?  How did that all that work out for Republicans at the ballot box?

The fact is, most Republican voters aren’t as pumped up as we Conservatives are.  They need a reason to wake up, to turn off the TV, to set aside their day-to-day activities, to understand the consequences of European-style Leftism, and to be drawn to what America could be again.

In short, Republicans need a candidate who will build excitement and turnout on election day.

While we don’t typically endorse individual candidates on this website, we do endorse sound political strategies.  That’s why the South Carolina Republican primary vote is so instructive.  The voters were pumped.  The turnout was a whopping 35% above that in 2008.  And Newt Gingrich, a strident advocate for Conservativism, won by a huge margin over his more moderate rival.

So what?

So this …

If Conservatives allow the Establishment Republicans to nominate the “safest” candidate they can find — the one everybody says is most “electable” because he can “win the Independents” with his middle-of-the-road Conservatism — turnout will suffer, and so will Republican chances of winning the election.  And if we lose, just imagine how foolish we’ll all feel, having failed with a Dole/McCain strategy not once, not twice, but three times.  Just thinking about it makes my teeth hurt!

So does this mean we must abandon those Independents?  No.  Of course not.  Independents aren’t bad people.  They’re just busy doing other things in life, they’ve come to take our freedoms for granted, and they need well-founded logical and emotional reasons to engage.  But is the right way to win their votes to offer up a candidate who is most like them?  Or do we want a Conservative, Reagan-esque communicator who alternates stern warnings about the growth of Big Government with compelling visions of a restored and renewed America of individual freedoms, smaller government, free enterprise, and world leadership?

The latter surely worked well for Reagan v. Carter in 1980.  It was an historic landslide.  Reagan won 44 states and 10 times as many electoral votes as Carter.  Does anyone think a McCain-style candidacy would have produced that kind of landslide in 1980??  Or even a victory??  Isn’t the 2012 election more like the 1980 election than any other in modern times?  Why repeat a losing McCain-style strategy when a Reagan-style candidacy and strategy would be so much more promising?

To be sure, Reagan is gone now.  But we didn’t know Reagan was Reagan until after his presidency.  Why not just choose the candidate who is most like him and apply the lessons from a winning strategy rather than a losing one?  Otherwise our future years may be spent dreaming of that which could have been and should have been but shall no longer be.