The left has for some time self-servingly wrung its hands about the state of the GOP as a supposed “regional” party. The basis for this claim was the defeat of northeastern liberals like Lincoln Chafee and the defection of others like Arlen Specter.  This meme was always short on intelligent thought, and now Scott Brown has exploded it.

As if the election of Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey weren’t enough, Scott Brown has surged to the position of favorite in the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat.  Deep Blue Massachusetts may just elect a Republican to end the Democrats’ filibuster proof hold on the Senate.  How could a “regional” party like the GOP do this?

According to the learned wisdom of the liberal analysts, the party was just too fanatically conservative for the northeast.  Yet it was liberals who kept losing there.  The reality is that it is those very northeastern liberals who diluted the Republican brand by collaborating with Democrats to expand the size and scope of government.

Scott Brown may not be the strongest conservative,  nor a standard bearer of the Tea Party movement, but he didn’t make a race of it in MA by running as a Rockefeller Republican, either.  Instead, he ran as a fiscal conservative.  That’s the key to winning in the northeast and everywhere else for Republicans.  Don’t listen to the self-serving advice of the left.  Some regional compromises are okay, but sticking to core principles is what will reinvigorate the Republican party, in New England as well as the country as a whole.

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