I couldn’t agree with this more:
“The GOP old guard received a hard kick yesterday. They talked only sporadically and defensively about social issues to the general public, had no sharp and oft-repeated messaging on health-care repeal and reform, and tried to win by “bread alone.” If they could not win that way this year, bread alone is not a winning proposition,” he explained.
For all the media bias, I think intuitively people still believe that parties to the right of centre are better in fiscal crises. The USA is in a fiscal crisis. If Republicans can’t win with a focus on the economy under these circumstances, then they simply can’t win with a focus on the economy, unless and until we stop teaching socialism as a winning economic proposition in our public schools.
by 
To be fair, many pro-life individuals cannot be persuaded by a party “uniting social, economic, and national security conservatives”, because having a system where vulnerable people have to sell their houses to pay for their child’s cancer treatments is also a violation of the right to life that is difficult for many pro-life individuals to swallow. This article perpetuates a common misconception: that all pro-life advocates can be persuaded to be “politically conservative”. Such a limited and boxy view of the pro-life movement is restrictive and destructive, especially in Canada, a country where most citizens value public health care. My personal feeling is that pro-life thinking fits into a Neo-Liberal ideology that would have Society take an interest in the welfare of all citizens, including the unborn. Unfortunately, I have thus been unimpressed by every party I have encountered.
Thanks, Clare, for writing in.
I freely admit (can’t hide it, in fact) that I am conservative (though not big-C Conservative in Canada, ie, I am conservative but not partisan). But you are right, that does not mean that other pro-lifers have to follow the same beliefs and there are many left-leaning pro-lifers to prove this point.
I think the point of this article, however, was not to say that pro-lifers need to be conservative, but rather that if there is a party that claims to be pro-life, in this case the Republicans, they should put forward a spirited and robust defence of the position, which Romney did not do. This is what I wholeheartedly agree with, that Republicans should not be scared of the issue.