There is a lot of talk after 2022 about how Republicans chose candidates that could not win over independent voters and many softly Republican-leaning voters.
But structuring the debate this way is strange, as if Republican primary voters ought to set aside their real preferences and make more responsible choices. I think you’re getting democracy backwards when you demand that voters solve problems for politicians, and not the other way around.
Whether a candidate can win a general election against a Democrat can’t be the only criterion for determining an “electable Republican.” Whether he or she can win a Republican primary matters just as much.
I think would-be Republican leaders, as candidates, need to think harder about how to represent both the base and the middle at the same time. This doesn’t entail running as a crazy person and then “shaking the Etch A Sketch” for the general.