It wasn’t going to happen, but the handful of moderates left in the GOP — all six of them — really wanted a change to the party platform. Just last week, the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of 12,000 gay conservatives, teamed up with pro-choice Republicans to launch a full-scale challenge to the platform.
Pitching a “party unity plank,” they are suggesting that the platform declare that “Republicans of good faith disagree” on family issues — language sure to be an anathema to the president and his base of social conservative supporters.
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“We are giving President Bush an opportunity for a Sister Souljah moment,” said Christopher Barron, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans. “This is an opportunity for the president to make clear that the GOP is a big tent. If there’s room in the party for free-traders and protectionists, they’ve got to make room for us.”
Yesterday, the party responded to the centrists’ challenge with a resounding smackdown.
A draft Republican Party platform distributed last night to delegates takes conservative stands on several social issues that sometimes divide the party, including abortion, stem-cell research and a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
In fact, it appears this year’s GOP platform will be even less tolerant of moderation on social issues than it was four years ago.
On abortion, the platform retained from previous conventions a call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, expanding its discussion of the issue to a five-paragraph section on the “culture of life” from just two paragraphs in the 2000 platform in a section titled “Upholding the Rights of All.”
On same-sex marriage, the draft says the party “strongly supports President Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage,” calling heterosexual marriage “the most fundamental institution of civilization.”
In other words, the centrists not only lost the drive to moderate the platform, they actually lost ground within the party.
At least one GOP moderate quickly raised a white flag.
Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, who supports abortion rights and is president of the Main Street Partnership, an organization of moderate Republicans, said his group had given up on trying to dissuade this year’s convention from its opposition to abortion.
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In a telephone interview yesterday, Mr. Castle said he held out little hope of a fight in the platform hearings. “I don’t intend to even present this,” he said.
I can’t say I entirely blame Castle for his defeatist attitude — he and other moderates have, after all, been defeated — but let’s put this into the broader context.
Just this week, Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor and Bush EPA chief, said the GOP is “excluding people” and she believes it’s time for moderates to start flexing our muscle a little more.” But what we’re seeing over the platform fight — if we can even call it a “fight” — is that moderates are satisfied being ignored. They wanted centrist langauge on social issues, and they instead got more conservative language than before.
Is this an effective way to “flex their muscle”? No, it’s an effective way to be taken for granted permanently and reinforce a party infrastructure that prefers that moderates are seen, but not heard.
That’s the funny thing about threats; they have to be believed and followed-up upon in order to be meaningful.
“Our constituents are ready to walk,” said Ann Stone [two weeks ago], founder and chairwoman of Republicans for Choice, a political action committee with 150,000 members which has joined forces with the Log Cabin Republicans. “Our message to the president is: ‘Stay out of the bedroom.’ “
Well, Ann, now you have your answer. Are your supporters still “ready to walk”?