Ramesh Ponnuru devotes his latest TIME column to an examination of the conservative-versus-moderate debate within the rebuilding Republican Party.

Ponnuru learns some lessons from last week?s election results:

What these races suggest is that Republicans’ principal problem in recent elections has not been that they are too far right, or ? as a lot of conservatives like to think ? not far right enough. After all, voters turned on both moderate and conservative Republicans in the late Bush years. The problem has instead been that voters have not thought Republicans of any stripe had answers to their most pressing concerns. Addressing those concerns, rather than repositioning itself along the ideological spectrum, is the party’s main challenge.

Earlier this year, Ponnuru discussed a key challenge for conservatives during an interview with Carolina Journal Radio. Click play below for a highlight of that conversation.