Whitman pushes GOP moderation

Christie Whitman's definition of "moderation" does not agree with mine.

Besides, she dropped out of the 2000 U.S. Senate race and handed the seat to Jon Corzine. This does not enhance her credibility as a Republican leader.

I don't know if you get Charlie Cook's email columns, but he had a very relevant one today:

OFF TO THE RACES
The GOP's Shifting Foundation

By Charlie Cook
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

For years, the foundation of the Republican Party was built upon eight pillars of equal importance. Those pillars were (in no particular order): cutting taxes, reducing the size of government, balancing the budget and being fiscally responsible, creating a strong national defense, opposing communism, emphasizing free enterprise, getting tough on crime and emphasizing social issues.

Over the last 20 years or so, however, the size and number of those pillars have been reduced so that today, the GOP foundation is teetering rather precariously on just two pillars: social conservatism and tax cutting. The inherent wobbliness of this foundation and the increasing tensions between the tax cutters and the social conservatives will shape the look of the Republican Party for the next decade.

If you look back 30 or 40 years, there were certainly some tension between the eight pillars. And, from time to time, some of those priorities were given greater weight than others. Still, a very delicate balance was generally maintained and the party stood solid. Granted, the GOP was more successful in winning presidential elections in those days, winning four out of five between 1968 and 1988. At the same time, Democrats held the House for 40 consecutive years and the Senate for 34 out of 40 years.

However, in 1980 Ronald Reagan began putting greater emphasis on some of these priorities, while reducing the emphasis on others. Reagan's focus was on cutting taxes, building a stronger national defense and fighting, indeed virtually eradicating, communism. Reducing the size of government and balancing the federal budget were merely given lip service. While you could have a weeklong symposium to determine how much of the 1980 election results were attributed to Jimmy Carter's weaknesses or Reagan's strengths, suffice it to say that the Californian found a recipe that worked exceedingly well for himself.

In the 1990s, a number of other pillars began to crumble or disintegrate. With the end of the Cold War, the fighting communism pillar became obsolete. Bill Clinton's success in convincing his party that they would have greater electoral success if their party positions on crime were not dictated by the American Civil Liberties Union, effectively reduced the GOP's tough-on-crime pillar. And while Reagan, who as governor had signed the nation's most liberal abortion law, talked a good game on social conservatism, he delivered very little. The height of the social conservative pillar rose significantly, to the point where it became almost as high as the tax-cutting priority.

Today, we see a GOP precariously balanced on two tall pillars, one emphasizing cutting taxes and the other emphasizing social conservatism. The five other, considerably shorter pillars make up the rest of the foundation. Those pillars emphasize smaller government, a balanced budget, strong defense, anti-terrorism (which has replaced anti-communism) and pro-free enterprise. One might throw in free trade as well. If that depicts a rather wobbly party foundation, it is.

While the new emphasis on social conservatism is a logical result of conservative and populist Southern, rural and small town Democrats moving into the GOP and a rise in the number fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, it has had the effect of triggering an increasing unease among more secular Republicans. These Republicans, whom you could call "country-club Republicans," or just Episcopalians and Presbyterians for short, have begun feeling increasingly isolated from their party. Many defected to Clinton in 1992 and 1996. And while some returned in 2000 and 2004, they did so with considerable misgivings.

Since the last presidential election, controversies over stem-cell research and Terri Schiavo have further exacerbated this sense among secular Republicans that their party has left them, in the same way that many socially conservative Democrats have described their disaffection with their own party. Plus, there is an enormous amount of guilt among many rank-and-file Republicans that the party's rigorous focus on fiscal responsibility and balancing the budget has fallen by the wayside even as Republicans control the House, Senate and White House.

Movements and issue groups rise and fall. For example, the 1980s and early 90s saw the ascendancy of Moral Majority. Today, my hunch is that we are seeing early signs that secular Republicans are starting to push back, and that they are less likely to sit quietly in the party's back seat over the next few years. As we have seen in the last 40 years or so, the pillars supporting the GOP have shifted with every decade. Whether this push-back by secular Republicans has the effect of altering the foundation of the Republican Party remains to be seen.

That is pretty accurate, but I think a muscular foreign policy and defense still is a major pillar, as well as hostility to public employee greed.

As an example, she points to a state Senate primary election in Florida, where anti-abortion Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry is challenging the incumbent, Sen. James King Jr., a Jacksonville Republican, after the two went toe-to-toe over Terry Schiavo last year.

As Senate president, King stopped Florida Gov. Jeb Bush from enacting legislation that would have required reinsertion of a feeding tube rather than allowing Schiavo, who spent years in a persistent vegetative state, to die. Randall Terry became a vocal proponent of keeping Schiavo alive by any means necessary.

King can expect a check from Whitman's PAC. "He's being challenged because the right disagrees with him on one issue," she said.