Some Democrats on this board hold this belief that there really are zero moderate Republicans left, and that's just dumb; we're just not as loud. McCain and Romney won, both with ease, after going slightly right. I think Christie is capable of winning without making as significant of an appeal to the base. Even if he's not their favorite, there are enough Republicans who know that he's easily our best bet to win the White House in 2016. I'm actually pretty confident that Christie would beat a weak Dem here in Maine. He has crossover appeal.
There are moderate Republicans, but many have started voting for Democrats. The Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicans, liberal on almost all social issues other than crime, sympathetic to learning and science, demanding clean government, sympathetic to the need for a strong defense, and having no use for racial or religious bigotry in politics, economics friendly to small business (but not particularly to Big Business) have found themselves out in the cold with a Republican Party that panders to bigots and Christian fundamentalists with which they have no compatibility. They were the moderates who preferred Ford to Carter in 1976 and voted for Reagan twice and the elder Bush once. They voted for LBJ in 1964 because they thought Goldwater too reckless, but came back to the GOP for Nixon.
Although many of the Asian and Hispanic voters or their parents were not in America when the Eisenhower/Rockefeller part of the GOP was large and decidedly Republican they seem to fit the pattern. Such people vote largely Democratic because they distrust the GOP for the adoption of anti-rational demagoguery for which the old Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicans had no use. Map forthcoming.
