Should the GOP "moderate" - my thoughts on Goldwater

David Frum has a new article arguing that Republicans need to nominate a moderate candidate for president in 2012 (he has already written off 2010 as a bad year for Republicans). Yes, I think this it stupid to talk about 2012, or even 2010 already, but Frum's argument is more on the principles of the Republican party than cadidates. 

His argument is that Barry Goldwater, a principled conservative, lost the 1964 election badly; that a moderate Republican would have done better, but still have lost to LBJ; that by doing better, Republicans would have held many more House seats; and by doing so, they would have slowed much of LBJ's agenda.

I have four crictisms of Frum's argument:

1. He offers no evidence that a "moderate" would have done better than Goldwater. Nor does he offer any evidence that a "moderate" would have have 36 seats or more - which seems outlandish to me, that a losing candidate would have those kind of coattails down the ticket.
   
2. He confounds moderate policy stances with popularity - i.e. he claims that Goldwater lost badly because he was conservative, not because he was unpopular, while Johnson was immensely popular. His advise is not that Republicans should nominate a popular candidate even if they are moderate (which might follow if his election analysis is correct) but that Republicans should nominate a moderate, even if he is less popular. That is, if Republicans had nominated Bush over Reagan in 1980, his victory would have been huge.
   
3. What is the lesson of 2008? Republicans followed Frum's advice, and nominated a "moderate", and still got drubbed, lost numerous seats, and Obama and the Democratic Congress will enact far-reaching legislation.
   
4. Frum's basic argument is that Goldwater's loss allowed Johnson to dramatically increase spending and enact Medicare - which he views as a damaging legacy for our nation (or at least knows that convervatives do). Therefore, Republicans should look to select moderates to retain control of the federal government, to avoid a similar legacy.   

An example of this might be George W. Bush and the recent Republican Congress - who increase federal spending by the highest percentage since Johnson and expanded Medicare.