GOP: Draw voters in without irking base

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON The Republican Party, having lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, confronts a dilemma that's easier to describe than to solve: How can it broaden its appeal to up-for-grabs voters without alienating its conservative base?

There's no consensus yet on how to do it. With the next election three years away, Republicans are tiptoeing around policy changes even as they size up potential candidates who range from tea party heroes to pragmatic governors in Republican- and Democratic-leaning states.

There's a partial road map, but it's more than two decades old, and the other party drafted it. Democrats, sick of losing elections and being tagged as out-of-touch liberals, moved their party toward the center and rallied behind Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in 1992.

Strategists in both parties say Clinton's achievement, however impressive, may look modest compared to what a Republican leader must do to construct a new winning formula, given the nation's changing demographics.

"Our challenge was to get voters back," said Al From, a chief architect of Clinton's political rise. "Their challenge is harder: get voters to come into a new coalition."

An array of Republican campaign veterans agree. They say the party's loyal base of conservative activists -- including evangelical Christians, anti-tax crusaders and anti-abortion advocates -- is too big, ideological and vital to be treated with anything but great care and respect. Republicans will go nowhere if they lose a hard-core conservative every time they pick up a new unaligned voter with a more moderate message.

While they circle that conundrum, Republican leaders hope for a charismatic nominee.

Several veteran strategists say Republicans should focus less on modifying their ideas than on improving their campaign mechanics and finding nominees with broader personal appeal than Mitt Romney, John McCain and Bob Dole.

"The foundation of the party as a conservative party hasn't been the principal liability, but the principal asset," said GOP campaign strategist Terry Holt.

Arizona-based Republican consultant Eddie Mahe said finding a charismatic candidate is more important. Given Americans' low opinion of politics, he said, "to sell the party as a party is nonsensical."

A 97-page post-mortem, commissioned by the Republican Party after Romney's loss last fall, said the GOP "is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future."

The report emphasized messaging and outreach more than possible changes to policies and proposals. "The party should be proud of its conservative principles," the report said, but it also must be more "welcoming and inclusive" to young voters, minorities and women.

From -- who founded the Democratic Leadership Council, a key proponent of Clinton's 1992 agenda -- says Republicans are on the wrong track. They must be more open to adjusting their policies, he said, if they want to win presidential elections.

Clinton's 1992 team believed "if you get the argument right, people will vote for us," From said. "Republicans don't have the argument right."

Clinton campaign aide Paul Begala said parties that win presidential elections are "always more mainstream and more unified. Right now, the Republicans are neither."

Begala said liberal activists made only modest complaints about Clinton's shift toward the political center because they were sick of losing elections with nominees such as George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

Begala said Republicans might need one more presidential loss to create a similar level of frustration, which can open the way to pragmatism and moderation. Nominating a tea party-leaning "true believer" such as Sen.

Ted Cruz of Texas could do the trick, Begala said.

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Texas looks to fund health program without feds

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday directed state officials to begin looking for money to keep the Medicaid Women's Health Program, even if the Obama administration revokes federal funding amid a fight over clinics affiliated with abortion providers.

"We'll find the money. The state is committed to this program," Perry told reporters, shortly before he issued a letter directing Thomas Suehs, head of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, to work with legislative leaders and identify money to keep the program going if federal funds are halted.

But pulling that off will be no mean feat: The program costs about $40 million and the federal government currently covers 90 percent of that.

The health program provides care to about 130,000 low-income women statewide. It had been expected to close next week, when Texas begins enforcing a law passed last summer that bars state funding from clinics affiliated with abortion providers. The Obama administration has said it will stop funding the program because federal law requires women to be able to choose any qualified clinic.

Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier countered that Texas has the right under federal law to determine qualified providers in the program.

The law is part of a long-running campaign by conservatives in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature to shut down abortion providers by imposing strenuous regulations and cutting off state and federal funds for their non-abortion services. Perry and Republican state lawmakers specifically don't want Planned Parenthood clinics, which treat 40 percent of the program's patients, to get any state funding, even when that money is not spent on abortions.

That has created a legal standoff, with federal and state officials accusing each other of political extremism while poor women will be left without necessary health care. The Women's Health Program serves women ages 18-44 earning less than $20,000 a year or less than $41,000 for a family of four.

Perry did not specify where the funding for the Women's Health Program might be found. "We've got a multibillion-dollar budget, so we've got the ability to be flexible on where the money comes from," he said after an event at Texas Republican Party headquarters.

His letter to Suehs noted officials have been discussing the possibility of making up lost federal funding in the Women's Health Program for weeks.

The state Legislature is out of session and does not meet again until next year, but Frazier said the governor has the authority to redistribute available funds as he sees fit — and would not need to convene a special session.

Perry said he's anxious to save the program after the Legislature last year cut funding for 160,000 women enrolled in it. In total, lawmakers slashed $83 million in funding for women's health programs. It was not immediately clear what other areas would have to be scaled back to make funds available for the governor to keep his promise.

The Texas Democratic Party blasted Perry for removing funding from other parts of the state budget to save the program.

"Instead of diverting resources from already strained state services Perry should own up to his mistake," party spokeswoman Rebecca Acuña said in a statement.

State law already forbids taxpayer money from going to organizations that provide abortions, so groups such as Planned Parenthood have established legally distinct corporations to separate family planning and women's health providers from clinics that perform abortions.

The law about to be enacted goes a step further to make any affiliation between a clinic and an abortion provider grounds for cutting off funding. That can mean sharing a name, employee or board member, even if the two clinics are legally and financially separate. Lawmakers last year said their goal was to cut off all state funding for Planned Parenthood, not to leave poor women without health care.

"Those people that are out there trying to say, 'Oh they're going to kill this program' are just dead wrong," Perry said of the Women's Health Program on Thursday. He said the Obama administration is "trying to support an organization that supports them. ... But Texans don't want Planned Parenthood, a known abortion provider, to be involved in this."

In a letter to President Barack Obama, Perry accused the administration of trying to violate states' rights "by mandating which health providers the State of Texas must use."

"I will not allow these services to be denied by your administration's political agenda and opposition to enacted Texas law that prohibits abortion providers and their affiliates from receiving taxpayer dollars," the letter said.

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Associated Press writers Chris Tomlinson in Austin and Angela K. Brown in Fort Worth contributed to this story.

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Can Mitt Romney Win Without Tea Party Support? (ContributorNetwork)

ANALYSIS| Of course Tea Party activists would like the Republican candidates for president to believe that not receiving the Tea Party official stamp of approval will cost them the 2012 GOP nomination, but do they really have that kind of power? If one watches Fox News and CNN, one might think so. But does it actually exist? Mitt Romney has almost no support from Tea Partyers, according to a recent CNN article, yet he leads the Republican field in most national polls by a large margin.

"My prediction would be is that somebody is going to fill that vacuum, the true fiscal conservative in the race," said Matt Kibbe, president of the Tea Party organizer FreedomWorks. He added, "We're not waiting. We're shopping."

At a June planning session, 150 Tea Party organizers were invited and asked to name their top choice for the 2012 GOP nomination. Only one supported former governor Romney.

Romney's most challenging problem with Tea Party members seems to be the health care reforms that he endorsed and signed into law in Massachusetts while governor of the state. He has defended the reforms, noting differences between the state's health care reforms and the unpopular reforms undertaken by the Obama administration. Many in the Tea Party movement, like Kibbe, feel that his defense of Massachusett's health care system is "doubling down."

Another part of Romney's problem is the evangelical vote. Since 44 percent of Tea Partyers self-identify as evangelicals, the members not lost on the health care could be lost among that particular demographic because of Romney's Mormon beliefs. A recent Gallup poll indicated that 18 percent Republicans and 19 percent Independent voters said they would not vote for a Mormon for president, which would indicate that, since nearly 80 percent of Tea Party members are Republicans or Republican-leaning Independents, there is most likely some overlap.

As troubling as the numbers might be, it should also be considered that, despite all the media hype and coverage given the Tea Party movement, their actual numbers may not be that strong. According to Patchwork Nation, a reporting project of the Jefferson Institute that studies American demographics, online databases only point to Tea Party membership nationwide as around 67,000 individuals. As Jefferson Institute Director Dante Chinni pointed out in an article for PBS, even if magnified ten-fold, the number of actual Tea Partyers remains insignificant.

So can candidate Mitt Romney simply write off the Tea Party during the 2012 Republican nomination process and hope they realign with the GOP if he eventually wins the Republican nomination for president? Or does he find a way to woo the seemingly more conservative element to his camp, such as offering the vice presidency to the likes of Tea Party Caucus leader Rep. Michele Bachmann or Tea Party favorite Herman Cain? The movement does seem to have a strong media presence, especially at Fox News Channel, which has been accused of fostering a marginal fringe movement as a national groundswell. But perception can be powerful thing. And regardless of how powerful the Tea Party actually is, the perception of its power and influence is seen as rather important in GOP circles.

As it stands, in the coming weeks and months, unless Romney alters his political stance considerably, it appears as if he will campaign without much, if any, Tea Party support. Although it might hurt him somewhat in the Republican race, it might not hurt him at all in the general election, as nearly half of Americans' hold an unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party movement.

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