The soul-searching of the Republican Party has boiled down to a rather simplistic question: to moderate or not to moderate. On Sunday, the man who led the GOP in the 2008 election -- Sen. John McCain -- came down on the side of the latter, telling ABC's "This Week" that, like Dick Cheney, he did not "want to moderate."
"I think we're kind of in a word game here," said McCain, when played a segment of a recent interview in which the former vice president said moderation was not the best course for the GOP. "I don't want to moderate either. I think our policies, the principles of our party, are as viable today as they have been in the past. In all due respect, the previous administration, by letting loose spending get completely, out of control, by betraying some of those principles of our party, cost us a couple of elections. And maybe I didn't do good enough job communicating with the American people. But we have to improve our outreach and our communication, and that doesn't mean betray our principles. I think it means adjusting to the 21st century in communications, in values, in goals, in all the things that American people want."
Watch:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/10/mccain-on-the-gop-i-dont_n_201318.html