Anderson Cooper Challenges Right-Leaning Colleague’s Repeated References to ‘Mainstream Republicans’: Where Are They ‘Hiding?’

CNN political commentator Margaret Hoover seemed to bemoan how the focus has been put on presidential candidates who have trouble winning the popular vote, including the votes of “mainstream Republicans.” And anchor Anderson Cooper had a burning question for her: Where are those people “hiding”?

Hoover, a right-leaning commentator, started off her analysis of the Iowa caucus on Monday by referring to the current Republican party as being on “suicide watch”:

Any party that wasn’t on a suicide watch that really wanted to win, they wanted to expand the base and wanted to win the majority of American votes…

From there, she went into a frustrated diatribe quoting GOP presidential candidate and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who often states how Republicans have lost the popular vote in all but one of the most recent elections for president:

And I don’t just mean like New York and California. I mean the old-fashioned way. You win the majority of people and the majority of states, and the Electoral College would recognize the thing that Nikki Haley said, which is that the Republican Party has won one out of the last six popular votes of presidential elections and try to expand the base.

By the way, like the autopsy report in 2012 from the Republican Party said the same thing. I mean, the sort of [laughs] mainstream Republicans understand this, but mainstream Republicans aren’t your average primary participant in Iowa, in South Carolina, or in any of the primary states that are going to be in the Sunshine Belt coming up. So you’ve got New Hampshire —

That prompted Cooper to ask: “Where are the mainstream Republicans hiding?”

To which left-leaning commentator John Avlon (who is also Hoover’s husband) responded: “Right here!” gesturing to Hoover, who had her own answer: “On CNN? I don’t know, there’s some on, you know, a couple other cable networks.”

But she continued to say that “mainstream Republicans” simply aren’t mobilized to vote for candidates who appeal to the most extreme parts of the political base:

But they actually just don’t participate always enthusiastically in the primary process. You know, they show up every four years, not every cycle. And that’s just, they’re lower propensity voters. It happens on the Democratic side, too. But the ones that can be competitive in a general election aren’t activated right now.

Watch the video above via CNN.