The New York Times ran another one of these entertaining moderates vs. right-wing-base stories today, explaining the ongoing tension between the two factions and using the convention as a news peg. It’s a good piece, but a couple of things jumped out at me.
“Frankly, if the president wins walking away with this, maybe the country is in a different place than where the moderate Republicans are,” said Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor and Bush administration official who is writing a book titled “It’s My Party Too.” “If he loses, it is an absolute validation of the fact that you cannot be a national party if you are excluding people.”
Oddly enough, I agree with the sentiment, but not the prediction.
If Bush crushes Kerry, the GOP will be convinced that governing exclusively from the right and wooing only conservative voters is a recipe for success. If Kerry wins, the GOP will be convinced that their strategy was sound, but it wasn’t executed correctly. Whitman’s wrong; the right will drive the party in either case.
Those who once might have been called Rockefeller Republicans say the prime-time slots set aside to present a centrist image show that the leadership knows the party must broaden its appeal to retain the White House. But they worry about their real influence in a party dominated by conservatives at a time when the ranks of House moderates are thinning and an activist group zeros in on candidates it brands RINO’s, Republican in Name Only.
How could a group of reasonable people be so delusional about their role?
There’s no great mystery here — moderates were tapped for high-profile convention slots because the GOP wants to put a centrist face on a right-wing party. If Republican moderates are really wondering about their “influence,” then they haven’t been paying attention for the last 12 or so years. Indeed, asking the party’s moderates to create a Potemkin village at the convention isn’t a sign of a party moving to the center; it’s actually a sign of the opposite.
“I think it is smart to have the Giulianis and the Schwarzeneggers,” said Representative James C. Greenwood of Pennsylvania. “Obviously, this race is going to be settled by the moderate voters of both parties. My lament is the party has not tried to figure out how to do that year-round.”
It’s not that they haven’t been able to “figure it out”; it’s that they haven’t even tried. It’s a conservative party with a conservative agenda reaching out to conservative voters. Moderates are called upon to be window dressing, when they’re called upon at all.
This didn’t occur by chance; it’s the result of a concerted effort by those who drive the party and its agenda.
Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, acknowledges that his organization’s goal is to make moderate Republicans an endangered species. “The problem with the moderates in Congress is they basically water down the Republican message and what you get is something that infuriates the Republican base,” Mr. Moore said.
What a great quote. It’s effectively an admission from an activist with unrivaled power within the party that those darn moderates just get in the way. Guys like Moore just wish they’d shut up and vote the way Tom DeLay tells them to. If they don’t, they should be purged and replaced. This is the party in which moderates are “worried about their real influence.”
“This is where the party started,” Mrs. Whitman said of the wing that likes to be known for fiscal conservatism and social pragmatism. “We need to start flexing our muscle a little more to remind people of that.”
That sounds nice, but what exactly would moderate muscle-flexing look like? They have no control in Congress, no influence in the White House, and a dwindling identity with state parties (which are even more right-wing than the U.S. House).
Logically, the only way moderates can “remind” the GOP of their existence is to follow Jim Jeffords lead and exit stage left. Otherwise, they’ll be ignored, taken for granted, and paraded around for convention photo-ops for the indefinite future.