In a real dog-bites-man story, it seems Republicans want to see their party become (gasp) MORE CONSERVATIVE!

To hear Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz (right) tell Fix-master Chris Cillizza the story of the big push made by party bigwigs (knowing how bad Willard Romney sucked) to persuade NJ Gov. Chris Christie to jump into the 2012 GOP presidential sweepstakes, go here.

"[E]ven in the face of calls for more moderation, it should come as no surprise if Republicans actually move in the other direction, sharpening their conservative positions."

-- Sean Sullivan, in a washingtonpost.com blogpost
today, "Republicans want their party to
change -- just not the way you think"

by Ken

This is a story Dan B uncovered while researching his book on the 2012 presidential election, Collision 2012. As Chris C notes, it's well known that there was a breakfast at which GOP insiders encouraged New Jersey's finest to jump into the race, there doesn't seem to have been any previous reporting of just how serious that attempt was.

Clearly it wasn't ideology that was on the minds of those GOP heavy hitters, although it can't have escaped anyone's notice that New Jersey Fats would have been unencumbered by the cripplingly imbecilic crackpottery that had become the party line in the struggle to the death being waged for the hearts and minds of 2012 GOP convention delegates. No, those power brokers were filled with dread at the thought of Willard atop their ticket because he was, well, so extremely Willard.

Not everyone in the GOP leadership got it, of course. For me the most enduring image of Election Night 2012 is the forced transformation of party insiders' smug confidence of victory into seething, uncomprehending rage as election results quickly vindicated those GOP heavy hitters' dread. Who can forget Karl Rove making a public spectacle of himself live on Fox Noise trying to bully the cold hard facts into submission?

As a result, this time for once it was trounced Republicans rather than Democrats who were left to puzzle out the bitter lessons of their electoral smackdown. Did anyone really believe the 'phants would be any better at it than their eternally clueless donkey counterparts?

No matter what happens on Election Day, you can count on Democratic insiders to divine the lesson that what they need to do is be more spinelessly mush-mouthed and fake-Republican-esque. And no matter what heppens on Election Day, can we not can count on the Republican faithful to conclude that what they need to do is be more conservative?

Note that I say "the Republican faithful," not "Republican insiders." Republican insiders not only can but must be more pragmatic, because insiders understand that winning elections is important. There's not much fun in being on the insider of nothing. And in the months since that dark night in November, we here at DWT, like observers everywhere, have been observing the surprisingly wide range of GOP notables who have said surprisingly candidly that the party can't survive by hermetically sealing itself into a tinier and tinier space on the farther and farther Right.

Which undoubtedly has a lot to do with why Governor Christie's name figures so prominently in speculation about 2016. He's the Unwillard. Of course this has to do in part with the mere fact that Big Chris can walk and talk and breathe like an actual human being, a standard that none of the top 100 2012 GOP presidential candidates could begin to reach. (Think: Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum. Need I go on? Okay, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Minister Hucksterbee. And I haven't even mentioned Big Willard.) But a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're living in the 21st century, not the 15th.

But again, this is the perception of some of the less blinded party insiders, not the mindset of the party faithful. Which leads me to wonder what was going on in the head of whoever wrote the head (if not the author himself) on Sean Sullivan's washingtonpost.com "Fix"-blog post today, "Republicans want their party to change -- just not the way you think."

Republican voters say it's time for the party to change. But simply moderating the GOP's views is not the prescription they are offering. In fact, what they want is just the opposite, a more conservative Republican Party.

On the heels of two straight presidential election defeats, Republicans have been doing a whole lot of soul searching, with a broad consensus emerging that the party must retool to be viable in the future. It's going to be a complicated process, a new Pew Research Center survey shows. The poll indicates there is remarkably little agreement over how the party should remake itself, with GOP voters split over whether the party needs to move to the right or left on several hot button issues.

By a 54 percent to 40 percent margin, Republicans and GOP-leaning independent voters want party leaders to be more conservative rather than moderate. This makes intuitive sense -- most Republicans themselves identify as conservative. But it runs counter to the takeaway that most Americans, the media and even some leading Republican figures have been trumpeting in the aftermath of 2012, which has been that the GOP needs to move to the middle, away from right-leaning views on social issues seen as a hindering the party’s efforts with independent voters.

"So how to change?" Sean asks. He notes that 67 percent of Republican leaners say the party "needs to address major problems," and 59 percent say the party "needs to reconsider some positions." But there, he says, is "where the consensus ends."

Sean goes on to break down some specific issues -- same-sex marriage, abortion, government spending -- drawing on this chart from the Pew study:

And he points out that Republicans, unlike other groups -- Democrats, Independents, and "All Americans" -- included in the results of a December 2012 Washington Post-ABC News poll, believe that what their party needs is not "better policies" but "a better leader to communicate." (Yeah, right, that's what was wrong with the 2012 GOP presidential field, with Michele and T-Paw and Herman and all the Ricks. They just needed better communications skills!)

Finally Sean notes "another finding in the Pew poll that could nudge Republicans to the right, or at least keep them from moving to the left": the fervor of the Teabaggers.

While tea party-aligned supporters make up just 37 percent of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, they make up about half of the primary electorate (those who say they always vote in primary elections). In 2012, tea party supporters made up an average of 61 percent of the electorate in Republican primary contests contests where network exit polls were conducted.

The result? More conservative Republicans nominees up and down the ballot.

True that, Sean, and I guess this as well:

You may have heard a lot in recent months about how the Republican Party should moderate its ways in the wake of the 2012 election. But this much is clear: Most Republicans don’t want it.

Still, let's have a quick show of hands: all those who didn't already know this. Anyone? Just Sean, I guess. File this one under "dog bites man."

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