The renewed drive to pull the GOP towards the middle

November 9, 2006

I’m not exactly optimistic, but I suppose it’s at least a little encouraging that the remaining GOP centrists are trying to reassert themselves.

The Republican Majority for Choice, a lobbying group for Republicans who support abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research, blamed the losses Tuesday on Iraq and “social extremism,” Co-chairwoman Jennifer Stockman said. “Moderates have been alienated for years. This was the last straw.”

Today, the group planned to unveil a campaign and website, modeled after the liberal MoveOn.org site, called RealRepublicanMajority.org. It will begin running TV ads in Pennsylvania on Sunday, contrasting images of Republican icons like Ronald Reagan with social conservatives such as Sen. Rick Santorum, who lost his seat Tuesday.

The campaign will continue through the 2008 presidential election, Stockman said. She said, “It’s all focused on making sure the Republican Party returns to the center if there’s any chance of keeping the presidency and getting some of these seats back.”

It’s not a bad message, and I’m sure the eight remaining Rockefeller Republicans in the country will be delighted to know that Stockman and others are on the case. I’d even go so far as to say that GOP would probably benefit if they took a few steps away from the far-right cliff.

But does anyone seriously belief this is going to happen anytime soon?

I noticed yesterday that Arlen Specter also made some public comments about creating a slightly-less conservative party.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the moderate conscience of Pennsylvania Republicans, on Wednesday urged the party to re-evaluate its priorities in the wake of nationwide election losses and called for a more progressive agenda that changes the strategy in Iraq and puts more emphasis on education and health care at home.

Democrats took solid control of the House in Tuesday’s elections, while control of the Senate – and possibly the future of Specter’s leadership position as Judiciary Committee chairman – rested Wednesday on an extremely close race in Virginia.

“We have just witnessed a seismic earthquake,” Specter said in an address to the Committee of Seventy, an election-watchdog group, at the Union League in Philadelphia. “There will have to be a fundamental re-evaluation of what is going on in Iraq.”

Again, all of this sounds very nice. And since Republicans haven’t lost this badly in an election cycle in decades, there may be a few more people inside the party willing to at least consider a subtle shift to the middle than there were, say, four days ago.

But I still don’t see it anywhere on the horizon. Consider the names in contention for leadership posts in the next Congress. In the House, we have far-right conservatives like Pence, Blunt, and Boehner. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell will replace Bill Frist, which, if anything, represents a shift to the further right.

I supposed it’s inevitable that the party will eventually lose enough that a change in philosophy will be necessary, but it’s hard to imagine it happening anytime soon, isn’t it?

Funny. Their timing is impecable, as usual. They at least had a little power they could have flexed, maybe, a few years ago. At a time when they actually could have done something to help themselves, their party and America. Yet they choose to look at this now. Tossers.

  • They do need to figure this out eventually. And the country needs them to do it, too. A Republican Party that re-embraces fiscal conservatism, healthy skepticism about what government can and can’t do, and a real belief in personal freedoms would represent a real step forward for America.

    If it takes them one more ass-whuppin’ two years hence before they see the light, however, I’m just fine with that.

  • Hee hee Reagon as a moderate! Those people are a hoot. Only in this screwed up Repub fantasy world would Iran-Contra Ron ever be considered moderate.

  • Goldwater got a thumpin’ in 1964 and conservatism hasn’t been the same since. Reagon “biggest deficit till Bush” wasn’t a conservative of the old-fashioned type. What I’m looking for is an old time Liberal.

  • Sen. Arlen Specter, the moderate conscience of Pennsylvania Republicans, on Wednesday urged the party to re-evaluate its priorities …

    Specter’s “moderate”? Let’s see … he’s for domestic spying, against habeas corpus, and for torture. If that’s “moderate” in Republican circles, they’ve got a long, long way to go.

  • You obviously haven’t been watching the news lately. They lost because they weren’t conservative enough. The Democrats won by running to the right of them on economic issues. Besides, it was more of a tide than a tidal wave.

    They didn’t change Washington. Washington changed them.

  • wingnuts never see the failure of conservatism as being caused by contradictions inherent in the philosophy, but only as a failure of nerve on the part of conservatives. if only they could be more ideologically pure, more focused and less willing (?) to compromise their core values, they — and their cockamamy philosophy — would never fail!

  • A friend of mine in Germany once said that Democrats in this country would be considered ‘right wing’ in most of Europe and the Republicans would have a very close eye kept on them by the police…

  • CB, I think you underestimate these guys. Politicians are the most agile species on the planet. I first learned this back when Bob Dole was ridiculing Ollie North, when North was espousing his extreme views and trying to get his own political career launched. At the time, I thought this Dole guy was okay — for a Republican. Suddenly, North snagged the GOP senatorial nomination in Virginia, and literally overnight, Dole went from disparaging North to singing his praises. Overnight I went from innocent semi-hemi-demi-bi-partisan to vengeful realist.

    The point is, a politician can go from extremist to moderate (or racist to civil-rights advocate) in the blink of an eye — if he thinks that’s the way the political winds are blowing. How many Republicans these days do you hear bragging about their role in the Clinton impeachment debacle? I wish the Rockefeller Repubs good luck — no matter how few they may have seemed last week, I got a hunch there are more of them now.

  • Translation: We will at least promise to think about not to being such complete dickheads only when the constituents rise up and kick our arses.
    or
    [sigh!] We don’t want to play nice but since people are being such big babies about our dirty tricks I guess we’ll at least mouth some empty homilies about acting like adults.

    Arlen “Crap Weasel” Spectre says:“There will have to be a fundamental re-evaluation of what is going on in Iraq.”

    Is it me or does this sound like the only reason to re-evaluate Iraq is because there is now a Dem majority? “We would have stuck to Stay the Curse, if it weren’t for those meddling Dems!”

    Next!

  • Reagan was no moderate and neither is Spector. The exit polls said that the one issue that drove the people to the polls was corruption in Washington. Did you notice that they have changed that to the war in Iraq. Actually the war was 4th on the list after corruption, immigration, the economy and then Iraq. Yes the war is important but the first issue was corruption. If the dems buy into the way the republic-thugs frame the debate and only work on the war, then we will still have a fight on our hands. The people want accountability and checks and balances. If the Dems deliver on that, we will be out of Iraq before we know it. I just hope the Dems take charge and hold some feet to the fire.

  • and the Republicans would have a very close eye kept on them by the police…

    Comment by Kathy

    Ha! Good line. 🙂

    One thing that has helped me keep the faith in the country is that in the face of what seemed to be monolithic Republican power, prosecutors kept going after the corruption. They brought down some powerful figures in government and each time they did I felt the system was still chugging away in the basement.

  • Dale,
    I totally agree. The media failed, checks and balances failed… the only thing that functioned was prosecutors. They saved the Republic. Who would have thought?

  • In another reach out to Democrats, Bush pushes the nomination of John Bolton. It is our duty to respond civily, and make concessions of our own.

    How about a nice, fat, juicy subpoena?

    I’d settle for a hearty “F*** NO!” when it comes to Bolton’s nomination.

    I smell another recess appointment in the works.

  • “The exit polls said that the one issue that drove the people to the polls was corruption in Washington.” – Kathy

    That’s what the sobered Kool Aid drinkers said as a cover for abandoning the Republican’ts. They just didn’t want to admit to being wrong about Iraq.

    And remember, these are the choices offered to them by AP, not just things they thought up themselves.

    And Corruption is after all a rather vague term (Jefferson’s cool cash being an example).

  • “I smell another recess appointment in the works.”

    Let Bush do this. It will show exactly how Bush intends to be bipartisan.Oh, and don’t forget, Bush can do a recess appointment for Bolton for Bolton’s current position, but that would mean Bolton does not get paid for being in that position. Or Bush can recess appoint for a lesser position that pays much less, but Bolton would not have the title or weight of the title behind his name.

  • Now we all know how the Republicans felt after every Congreesional election for the last 12 years. Lokk at all teh idiots pointing fingers. One side says they were too liberal and the other says they are too condervative.

    We have two years to establish Dems as a moderate fiscal party. We can fight the cukture war because eventually we will win that one. Setting good, Clintonesque, fiscal policy and strengthing the 2008 Democratic candidate with a strong economy is the way.

    Frankly I don’t care what the GOP decides to do. Either way they will suck.

  • I think the Democratic Party should do everything it can to make the Republican Party resemble the Federalists, the Whigs and the Know-Nothings, that is, become extinct.

    They willingly adopted all the race haters when LBJ’s Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts forced the old “Solid South” out of FDR’s impossible coalition. Now they have every right to strangle on what they’ve ingested. And good riddance.

  • I’m with Gracious (lucky #13). Lord knows, when the pollsters said the voters had “values” at top of mind (even though no one knew what the hell that vague term meant), the press and pols couldn’t stop talking about it. Maybe because it was good time to batter Hollywood and those godless Dems. But this time, voters said it was “corruption” that was top of mind–a term everyone knows–and everyone knows who they meant; the endless stream of Rethuglican felons and miscreants. So NO MENTION of it in the press. No, the country hates Bush and the Rethug because of their misunderstood war. The Dems better address this issue–the fact that the government is for sale and that elections themselves are coming under suspicion. And the press, damn them, should be forced to recognize this issue. A good place to start to remedy this corruption might be to regulate the media and make it illegal, once again, for the same corporations to own more than one newspaper or tv outlet.

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