[Mb-civic] The Soul of an Elephant

Wed Nov 17 17:01:50 PST 2004

The Soul Of An Elephant

By Michael Cudahy, AlterNet
 Posted on November 17, 2004, Printed on November 17, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20522/

The search for the soul of the party, it seems, is not confined to the
Democratic faithful, where those belonging to the traditional ³base² are
gearing up for a fight to wrest influence away from the centrists in the
party.

 There is a similar battle playing out in the Republican arena as well,
where for the past 20 years, moderates have watched their ability to affect
the GOP¹s national agenda slowly erode. An oppressed band of political
optimists, they have subjected themselves to years of abuse in the hope that
thoughtfulness and good manners would restore their power in the party.

Referred to as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) by many hard right
conservatives, they are respected by the voters in their states, but
despised by party leaders in Washington.

Out-organized by neo-conservative groups like the Christian Coalition, the
Family Research Council, and the Club for Growth, moderates are no longer
viewed as respected members of a philosophically broad-based party. They
have, instead, become targets for a group of cannibalistic vigilantes bent
on establishing ideological purity.

Drunk with power from their recent electoral victory, these ideologues make
no pretense about their intentions. Stephen Moore, president of the Club for
Growth, says his organization's goal is to punish moderate Republicans and
make them an endangered species. ³The problem with the moderates in Congress
is that they basically water down the Republican message and what you get is
something that infuriates the Republican base,² Moore says.

 ³They will learn to conform to our agenda or they will be driven from our
party,² he says simply.

The ³Problem Children²

In previous years, when party majorities in the House and Senate were
thinner, GOP moderates were able to manifest more control over an
increasingly extreme Republican agenda. This year¹s U.S. Senate elections
show how that equation has changed. Candidates with demonstrated hardcore
conservative credentials won open seats in Oklahoma and Florida, as well as
North and South Carolina. They also defeated Democratic minority leader Tom
Daschle in South Dakota. These victories increased the Republican¹s majority
in the Senate from 51 to 55 seats.

In Pennsylvania, respected Republican senator Arlen Specter narrowly
survived a Club for Growth-financed $2 million primary challenge from
conservative congressman Pat Toomey. Moore saw the Pennsylvania effort as
³serving notice to Chafee, Snowe, Collins and Voinovich and others who have
been problem children that they will be next," referring to moderate
Republican senators Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe and Susan
Collins of Maine, and George Voinovich of Ohio.

 Ironically, after the last election, this small group of Republican
moderates may be all that stands between the country and the total
domination of its political agenda by neo-conservatives like Moore ‹
radicals who have spent a decade and a half planning for this moment of
ascendancy in American political history.

The moderates hope that as President Bush begins his second term, he will
see the light and want to establish a legacy that is more inclusive, more
reasonable and more moderate. Regrettably, the president¹s actions and the
public declarations of party leaders belie such hopes.

Already Porter Goss, the president¹s choice to be director of the CIA, is
replacing respected intelligence officers with political appointees more in
line with this administration¹s political agenda. While the retirement of
Colin Powell as secretary of state, and the nomination of National Security
Advisor Condoleeza Rice as his replacement, promises a similar purge in this
critical cabinet department. And, rumors abound that the president is
already considering nominating Justice Clarence Thomas to be Chief Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court should William Rehnquist retire from that position
‹ a nomination that could change the ideological direction of the court for
a generation.

Former New Jersey governor and Bush administration official Christie Todd
Whitman said this summer: ³If the president wins this election walking away
then maybe the country is in a different place than where the moderate
Republicans are. If he loses, it is an absolute validation of the fact that
you cannot be a national party if you are excluding people.²

The issue facing Republicans may not be a question of inclusion or
exclusion, but rather one of polarization. Over the last 20 years
neo-conservatives have pushed a radical social and economic agenda. As this
program has become increasingly extreme, the country has been driven more
and more into an us-versus-them posture. We have seen the emergence of
ideological ³bases² within the two major parties, and the destruction of the
country¹s ideological center.

 The result has been the defection of millions of Americans voters who no
longer identify with either party and have chosen, instead, to become
Independent.

The ³Civil War² Within

 It is into this political wilderness that a dwindling number of hopeful,
but increasingly outnumbered, moderates have been driven. As the
neo-conservative majority increases, these moderates are caught between
their natural instinct to be loyal but powerless Republicans, and the
reality that their concerns are being totally ignored by Senate and House
leaders.

When Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee,
made the mistake of suggesting that judicial nominees who sought to overturn
Roe v. Wade would likely face a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate,
Republican conservatives immediately moved to deny him the chairmanship of
the committee.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said that he was ³disheartened²
by Specter¹s position and all but withdrew his support for Specter.

 The first test for Republican moderates may come on the issue of
filibusters. Frist has suggested that Senate filibusters be declared illegal
‹ a legislative move that requires a simple majority to pass, instead of the
67-vote super-majority required to change Senate rules. Sen. Charles Schumer
(D-N.Y.) responded that such a move would be viewed as ³a nuclear attack² on
Democrats by this administration and could have long-range Constitutional
implications. Should Frist push such a tactic, will the moderate Republicans
capitulate to pressure from party leadership, or align themselves with
Democrats to block a blatant Republican attempt to seize long-term control
of the Senate.

Jennifer Stockman, national co-chair of the Republican Majority for Choice
and a delegate to the 2004 Republican National Convention, sees the prospect
for a serious and potentially damaging confrontation. ³Election Day brought
the mudslinging battle between Democrats and Republicans to a close,² she
says, ³but an equally brutal battle for the heart and soul of the Republican
Party is looming. Will President Bush work to unite us, as he promised in
his acceptance speech, or will the civil war between GOP party
fundamentalists and moderate pragmatists, only serve to eventually ruin the
GOP?²

Her concerns raise the serious question as to whether moderate Republicans
can rebuild their influence in the party or become an historical irrelevancy
‹ a throwback to a kinder, gentler time?

One longtime Republican analyst in Washington (unwilling to be named for
fear of professional retaliation) says: ³Moderates have to commit to a fight
using the same hard-nosed tactics that have made them such a legislative
minority in their own party. At the moment they lack the fire to confront
neo-conservatives who are rapidly rewriting the historic principles of their
party. A narrower, more focused approach that targets winnable state
legislative and congressional seats will allow them to get maximum value for
their more limited resources. It will require patience and passion, but a
variety of recent surveys indicate that it is a tactic that has a realistic
opportunity for success.²

CNN election day exit polling supports this theory. About 45 percent of
voters in the last election identified themselves as moderate, and 45
percent of those voters supported Bush. This represents a total of
approximately 11,745,000 votes. Also supporting Bush were 13 percent of
voters who identified themselves as liberals, or 1,583,400 voters. These
numbers demonstrate that while the energy and organizational commitment of
the religious right were a critical piece in the president¹s victory, it was
meaningful moderate support that won him re-election.

A change of 30-40 percent of these moderate votes would have overwhelmed the
president¹s 3.5 million vote margin and reversed the outcome of the
election. In all likelihood, such a shift might also have altered the
results of a number of tight U.S. Senate and House races. While such a move
would have elected a Democratic president and some Democratic senators and
congressmen, it almost certainly would have expanded the ranks of moderate
Republicans as well.

Centrists in both parties must decide whether to trade a little partisanship
in the interest of restoring ideological balance to an increasingly
polarized nation. ³As these fissures deepen, they transcend President Bush
and Sen. Kerry,² says Alan Murray, Washington bureau chief for CNBC. ³They
run deeper than disagreements over the Iraq war. They represent a
fundamental difference in visions of the country's future.²

³Moderate Republicans have a couple of choices,² says one longtime GOP
activist. ³We can set the clock back 30 years and begin a process of
rebuilding ‹ similar to the one the religious right used to seize power.
Start at the school board and county commission level and develop
candidates, and then move on to state legislative seats and finally into the
Congress. The other option is to wait for a political event so seismic in
its proportions that it shatters the present political environment and
forces massive political realignment along ideological lines. An example of
such an event might be the overturning of Roe v. Wade.²

Wolf In Sheep¹s Clothing

The irony of the current situation is that too many political observers are
willing to accept President Bush¹s assertion that this election represents
an overwhelming ³mandate² for his agenda, one that many suggest is the
result of almost total evangelical support. This notion appears to be more
perception than reality. Exit polling shows that 21 percent of all
self-identified evangelical voters supported John Kerry ‹ a total of
2,801,400 votes.

What Republican political strategists did accomplish with the president¹s
reelection was to expand their strength in the Congress, a very different
outcome than building a nationwide coalition prepared to support the new
Republican Party¹s extreme social agenda, and questionable economic,
environmental and foreign policies.

In the near term, Americans must beware of what can only be described as a
wolf in sheep¹s clothing. The religious right ³has never been so activated²
as it is now, says Andrew Sullivan, a pro-life, gay, conservative op-ed
writer for the Washington Times. ³They feel as if they are responsible for
the president¹s re-election, and their strategy now is going to be to appear
moderate while pushing their radical social agenda.²

The daunting challenge that all moderates ‹ not just Republicans ‹ must
address is how to penetrate the imposing political machine constructed by
neo-conservative activists like Stephen Moore, and his extremist allies, and
win the support of the millions of moderate voters who re-elected President
Bush.

The first step may be a matter of storytelling ‹ of weaving a narrative.
Will moderates be able to discredit the illusions Republicans created during
this last election? They need to dispel the myths that massive government
borrowing creates a sound and healthy national economy, that the outsourcing
of millions of good jobs strengthens the financial security of the American
middle class, that undermining clean air and water standards is good for the
economy, or that packing the U.S. Supreme Court with conservative justices
who could overturn Roe v. Wade will protect American women¹s personal
freedoms.

Improved communications, in and of itself, will not be enough. Republicans
and Democrats must begin to forge new coalitions. Hopefully this can be done
in quiet, bipartisan ways, but if necessary it must be done in an
independent manner that demonstrates a shared concern for America¹s
long-term political future.

The fact that 55,949,407 Americans supported John Kerry demonstrates that
this country is not a bastion for what many in the Bush administration would
have you believe is their right-wing agenda. Measured as a share of the
popular vote the president won by a margin of 2.9 percent ‹ the narrowest
margin in the last 88 years.

As a nation, America has flourished when its political center has been
strong and vocal ‹ when its national discourse has been energetic and
combative ‹ while remaining respectful and bipartisan. To restore reason,
Republican moderates must be prepared to take some small political
organizing steps, as well make a major political statement. They must
demonstrate that they are no longer willing to submit to bullying by
Republican neo-conservatives. ³This phenomenon has become a disturbing
reality within our party,² said Stockman, ³and has been fueling the battle
for its heart and soul.²

Of equal importance must be a willingness on the part of Republican
moderates to step forward on a regular basis and align themselves with
Democrats on issues where they agree, such as: a responsible stewardship of
the environment, protection of a woman¹s right to choose, meaningful reform
of the nation¹s health care and educational systems, or federal support for
critical stem cell research. This would send a powerful message to President
Bush that he has drawn an ideological line they are unwilling to cross.

Such a demonstration will prove to millions of Americans that they are no
longer moderates but are, instead, radical centrists capable of, and
determined to, the retaking of political ground that is legitimately theirs.