What moderates?

November 18, 2005

It’s certainly tempting to single out for praise the handful of Republican members of the House who balked at some of their leadership’s indefensible budget decisions. When lawmakers see the GOP going too far off the right-wing cliff, it’s encouraging to see some of them announce they won’t take the leap with the rest of their party.

But as Matthew Yglesias noted yesterday, Republican defectors aren’t necessarily principled moderates; they’re nervous incumbents who’ve noticed the winds blowing in the opposite direction.

These aren’t moderate Republicans. There are no moderate Republicans. If there were moderate Republicans, those would be members of the Republican Party who had moderate views on policy questions. A person with moderate views on policy questions would have been regularly defecting from the extremist-led leadership in such years as 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2005 as the aforementioned leadership pushed crazy bill after crazy bill through the congress. But there aren’t any Republican members of the House of Representatives who fit that description. What you saw this afternoon were vulnerable Republicans running scared from an increasingly unpopular GOP leadership.

They should be scared.

Quite right. There were a handful of Republicans, primarily from northeastern states, who were literally afraid to go along with their leadership yesterday afternoon. Does that make them sensible centrists? Not really.

Ask yourself: if Bush had a 70% approval rating, Tom DeLay were still riding high, and the GOP expected to expand its congressional majority in 2006, would they bravely take a stand against irresponsible Republican budget policies? It’s unlikely. After all, very few of these “moderates” have consistently taken similar positions in the recent past.

When irresponsible tax cuts came up, most of them went along. When it was time to make Tom DeLay the House leader, all of them went along. But now that the polls are looking discouraging for them, Dems are recruiting well for ’06, and the constituents back home are embracing an anti-incumbent attitude, they’re moderates? They’ve been hiding it well.

You’re absolutely right. The myth of the moderate Republican is one that seems to exist mostly in the mind of the media and the wishlist of the Democrats hoping to achieve anything in Congress. I would add another qualifier to Yglesias’s taxonomy, though. They are vulnerable Republicans who, at their core and in their home district, should be more moderate than the controlling right wing of the GOP. They have gone along with the decisions you and Matt note because there have been no consequences. While the president’s plunging approval and general GOP disarray have added some potential negative results for this behavior, the Democrats (and unfortunately the media) haven’t done nearly enough to assign ownership, place blame, and ram home to the voters in the districts exactly how negligent these members from more moderate districts have been with the trust of their constituencies.

  • This dovetails nicely with yesterday’s post, “An escalation of rhetoric”. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/5868.html#comments

    It is just time to start getting right in RepubCo’s face and calling their Bullshit Bullshit. When Cheney criticized Murtha for calling for withdrawal of troops in Iraq, Murtha came back with Cheney’s chickenhawk ways and his lack of any substantial credibility on the issue of sending others to fight a war for oil. Mr. Murtha didn’t walk away after making one bold statement.

    This letting fainthearted righties get away with hiding behind a threadbare veil of “moderation” just because they’re worried about winds of change is bogus and lame as hell and a waste of humanities time and just generally embarrassing. RepubCo is keeping this country from moving forward as a society and being competitive in a 21st Century world environment for their own selfish ends. They are bad for everyone and everything they touch and they should be confronted front and center on every word of crap they utter. And that is everything they say.

  • Each and every one of their votes must be hung around their necks like huge anvils. The northeast voters in particular can lead the revolt. My wife and I are slowly saving money for the coming elections, almost like a”Fitzmas club.” Up to $3,500 right now which will be split between many candidates in various states. I sure could use this cash to do something else, but the time has come to sheet or get off the pot. Don’t know which this is, but I will find out in November 2006.

  • Speaking of Tom DeLay, I have been compiling informaton about his “charitable” activities at the TPM Cafe.

    http://auctionhouse.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/11/9/15581/1958

    I posted all of the information available from the IRS returns on Form 990s for 2003, 2002 and 2001 for The DeLay Foundation For Kids, Inc., The Oaks at Rio Bend Inc. and Celebrations For Children Inc.

    Bill Sarpalius and Marcel Dubois were two of several Washington lobbyists on board the year that 72% of all contributions to the DeLay Foundation came from disqualified persons” such as the board of directors. More than $388k of proceeds from golf tournaments were never reported until the following year.

    The DeLay Foundation ostensibly supports the Oaks at Rio Bend which is supposed to be building housing for foster children in Fort Bend, Texas. Christine DeLay is the Oaks at Rio Bend chairman.

    Somehow, the Oaks at Rio Bend became a new entity with a new name and tax identification number in the same year that it received a substantial donation of cash and land. The land was donated by a rich Texas foundation which owns $59 million in mineral rights and 21,0000 acres of property in DeLay’s district.

    Celebrations For Children was the infamous “charity” managed by DeLay’s daughter that was going to evade the ban on soft money by charging big bucks for outings at the 2004 Republican National Convention. After a public outcry, the plans were cancelled. I think the media thought the charity was defunct.

    For the year ended August 31, 2004, Celebrations For Children raised $300k, spent $210K and had $96k in the bank. Not one penny went to charity.

  • if “…Republican defectors aren’t necessarily principled moderates; they’re nervous incumbents who’ve noticed the winds blowing in the opposite direction.”

    then what are Dems, who for the most part have failed utterly to wage even a token opposition until bush’s poll numbers dropped into the low 30s?

  • Rigel: the word you are looking for is “lame-ass.”

    Yes, we’ve had lame-ass Dems. There are a few who do well for their side, and their people, but far too many just can’t cut it.

  • In order to raise enough money to be considered a “serious” candidate, a Democrat must pander to corporate interests. What? This is news? The difference is that Republicans are proud to be bought, Dems are embarrassed–but have to do it anyway or they won’t get the D.C. Party’s backing and won’t appear in the media as “serious” or “viable.” Web-base, populaist fund-raising via the Web will change that, but probably not for three more election cycles.

  • There are indeed Repug moderates: they’re called “DLC Democrats”.

    As the Repug party has marched towards the right, moderate Rockefeller-style R’s have become D’s– or at least have been voting that way. That was the whole point of Clinton’s “third way”: peel off the moderates who were getting shafted by the rightward drift of the Repug party. Shrub got them back again by pretending to be a moderate, and then kept them last year by scaring them with threats of mushroom clouds.

    We are picking up more and more moderates every day. With the exception of Jeffords, it’s been mostly voters and not actual officeholders who’ve voted Democratic or actually switched parties in recent years. But I’ve been seeing a few reports of local officeholders switching parties. I expect we might see many more. Nixon ’68 and Reagan ’80 peeled off a lot of right-wing and centrist Democrats. I think we’re finally getting them all back now: not by changing any of our own positions, but merely by welcoming moderates who are disgusted by the radical right.

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