Republican moderates see robots not people

Recently, moderates like David Frum have written about Rubio and Crist, and other primary challenges in which the conservative base is supporting conservative candidates against  candidates favored by moderates.

The moderates are claiming that their candidates hve local support and can win, but the national conservative movement is hurting the moderate candidate by financially supporting conservative candidates in primaries who can't win the general election. For this theory to be valid, one has to believe that voters are stupid and will change their minds when money enters the campaign. If the moderate choice has local support, then the candidate should win the primary, then be in a good position to win the election once the party unites behind the primary winner.

I don't think conservatives will pull a Scozzafava and vote for the Democrat candidate if their conservative candidate loses a primary -- in NY-23 there was no primary, but Scozzafava fell behind and dropped out when the conservative independent candidate, Hoffman, gained a lead, then Scozzafava supported the Democrat.

But, if Crist wins the primary, the conservatives will not throw their support to the Democrat, so the moderates don't have to worry about the primary depleting Crist's campaign money and energy -- in fact, it should enhance Crist's campaign.

The moderates are afraid Rubio will get attention and that the voters will prefer him over Crist, therefore placing the conservative over the moderates' choice. But that would be the people's choice. If the voters really don't like Rubio as a candidate, they will not vote for him. If the people like Crist, they will vote for him. In this partisan environment, Democrats and Republicans have made up their minds, and since independents are more politically active, they can register Republican for the primaries and vote for either Crist or Rubio.

In order to give credence to Frum's theory, you would have to believe that primary's are a problem, and that in order to avoid them, voters must rely on the Republican moderate leadership to pick one candidate which everyone supports without question. As far as national support interfering with local elections, if the locals know their politicians, then national interference will have little effect on outcomes. I can understand a presidential election being influenced by money and marketing when the nation is not familiar with certain candidates, but local voters know the players and can make informed decisions. Frum, and other moderates, are wrong to think voters in local elections are swayed by national support from the conservative base. The local voters in Florida will decide in the primaries who they want to run, and that will be their choice.

The moderates are less concerned with local voters having free choice than with who has control of the party. This lack of concern for choice, and this assumption that people are robots who can be programmed by the conservative base leaders, reflects poorly on the moderate mindset as it relates Republican voters -- or people in general for that matter.