Republican voters upset with GOP

Before last fall's elections, I wrote that Republicans in DC had moved away from their voters' conservative principles, a shift which I predicted would surely lead to electoral disaster. Richard Viguerie confirmed this hypothesis with an informal online poll a few weeks ago. Now a national poll revisits the same theme and reveals just how disaffected Republican voters have become.

The new CBS/NYT poll reports that GOP voters are dissatisfied with the current crop of presidential candidates and feel the party of Reagan has abandoned its principles:

Republican voters aren't happy yet: A majority — 57 percent— wishes there were more choices. A significant number don't think the party's candidate will win in 2008.

And when Republicans today look at their own party, they see divisions within its ranks. Most say their party has drifted from the principles of Ronald Reagan: Seven in 10 say the GOP has gone off on a different path.

A write up about the poll in the NYT notes that "19 percent [of GOP voters surveyed] said they wanted the next president to become less conservative [than George W. Bush], and 39 percent more conservative."

As we've seen already, Democrats don't understand the simple truth that Americans want limited government. Let's just hope that the GOP wakes up and returns to what their voters want. If they get lucky, maybe they'll even do it at a time when Democrats have begun to earn voter ire by returning to their big spending ways.