By Thomas Fitzgerald
Inquirer Staff Writer

Looking at the ruby-red splotch showing shrunken Republican strength on county-level national maps of presidential returns, many party leaders are fretting over what went wrong.
Debate is raging over how to position the party to begin a comeback, and several would-be saviors - and potential presidential candidates - were trying out their moves last week at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Miami.
Some say the party has drifted from its fiscally conservative, small-government principles. Others say too much emphasis on issues such as opposition to abortion and gay rights, important to the party's dominant social conservatives, created an image of intolerance that repels large numbers of moderate and independent voters.
"We have to go back to our core Republican values on fiscal responsibility, a strong defense, and promoting small government," said Bob Asher, a Montgomery County businessman and the Republican national committeeman for Pennsylvania. "I don't believe in getting hung up on divisive social issues. We have to be perceived as the party of moderation."
Barack Obama won the four suburban counties around Philadelphia by a 197,000-vote margin. That region has been traditionally Republican but has increasingly supported Democrats in presidential elections as the national GOP has drifted rightward on social issues.
Religious conservatives, however, have become integral to the GOP coalition during the last generation, and it would be problematic to alienate them.
In a speech at the Miami governors conference, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a popular figure with the religious right, praised the "prayer warriors" she met on the campaign trial. She also alluded to the party's official opposition to abortion rights, saying that "defense of those who are vulnerable and weak" represents "all that is good in America." Added Palin: "Heaven help us if we get away from that principle."
Former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman argued that the party lost the White House because Obama won decisively among moderates - by 21 percentage points over John McCain. By contrast, President Bush lost moderates by only 9 points in 2004.
"The message is pretty clear: We're going to have to be more inclusive if we want to be a majority party," Whitman, cochair of the moderate Republican Leadership Council, said Friday in an interview. "It's not as if the Christian conservative base didn't vote."
Indeed, exit polls found that white evangelical voters made up a bigger share of the electorate this year than in 2004, 26 percent compared with 23 percent, suggesting the McCain-Palin ticket hung on to the important group.
The struggle for the GOP's soul will play out in the race now under way for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, and in the jockeying among potential presidential candidates and those who want to be leaders of the party.
Some of those were at the Miami conference, including leading governors such as Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Charlie Crist of Florida, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.
The gathering included plenty of direct and implicit criticism of McCain, including Pawlenty's contrast of the nominee's style with the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan.
"People want to follow positive leaders; they don't want to follow cranks," Pawlenty said. He argued that the party needed to show it had pragmatic solutions to the problems of real voters, such as health care and college costs.
"People don't want to hear just 'I'm against earmarks,' " Pawlenty said, referring to a favorite McCain topic. "They're thinking, 'What are you going to do for me?' "
Jindal, 37, said voters "fired us with cause" when they rejected six GOP senators and about 20 members of the House. It was the second election cycle in a row with such setbacks.
The Bush administration and Congress were wrong to cut taxes without cuts in spending, Jindal said, adding that the party did not offer solutions during the campaign besides saying "the other side's worse." Corruption scandals involving GOP lawmakers did not help, he said.
Since the election, Republican leaders have marveled at the Obama campaign's ability to raise money, capture young and new voters, and mobilize supporters with technology. Moderates and conservatives agree on the need to improve the GOP's campaign capabilities.
"We have to learn how to be more inclusive, how to appeal to minorities and young people, how to use the Internet and dramatically improve our ground game," said Jim Roddey, GOP chairman of Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania. "It's going to take some extraordinary leadership to craft a message and a structure that's going to accomplish all of that. But it has to be done; we got our butts kicked."
Still, state Republican chairman Rob Gleason of Johnstown said the bottom dropped out of McCain's campaign in Pennsylvania when the financial-markets crisis hit in mid-September.
Despite that headwind, he said, Republicans picked up some state legislative seats in the suburbs and kept control of the state Senate - the only state legislative chamber the party has from Virginia to Maine. In addition, state Attorney General Tom Corbett won reelection despite the Democratic wave by building a diverse coalition.
"We'll get back in the game and be competitive," Gleason said.