There is a difference between the Republican precinct committeemen voices and the Republican voters. The growing number of Independent voters, which may be more of a switch from Republican to Independent, adds another complication.

For example, nationally, the Democrats are still trying to nullify some issues, like the debate concerning the First Amendment and the Catholic and other churches being forced to include abortion and contraception services in health plans. The American Conference of Catholic Bishops is not agreeing with Obama administration, even though Pres. Obama is going around claiming there is a compromise.

The Democrats have been able to turn the issue in the media to a “women’s health issue” — yet for decades, contraceptive services were not part of health care packages. Aside from cross-ulitization of some contraceptive drugs that can be used to treat other women’s health conditions (are are permissable under Catholic doctrine for that use), the real issue is that the Churches’ health plans are largely self-funded, thus the Obama claim that the insurance companies will pay for the services does not solve the issue. The media spin, however, seems to be otherwise.

What will be next in the spin doctrine? Gas prices – already the President is saying he can do little to influence the price of gas. Job growth, while positive, has yet to be great and there is not any Department of Labor study to say what pay range of jobs have come back. If we gained back a bunch of low pay service sector jobs, that won’t solve the economic problems. The media has yet to detail where the job growth is or in what pay ranges. More McDonald’s fry cook jobs won’t make things better. Large manufacturers hiring more skilled labor at typical middle-income wages will.

Republicans need to focus on the basic that affect the pocketbooks. The additional First Amendment rights issues are strong points for Republican mirco-targeting, where Republicans do far better than Democrats.

Slash and burn everything in the state budget won’t win an election. Neither will advocacy for spending more and more until we are out of money again. Reasonable Republicans with common sense approaches will meet the voter needs and the smart Legislative candidate will keep that in mind. Overall, Arizona may go a bit blue in some races, but we are still more red than blue when it comes to the Legislature. The Democats will be challenged to find those additional media spins to take an issue and claim they fixed it.

The smart Republican will anticipate the spin and underscore the basics. The Legislature will stay red, but there will be purple districts and those purple votes/voices may foster a different approach in the session that convenes in 2013.