Posted on 12/01/2006 9:39:14 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
They call themselves Main Street Republicans, moderates consigned to the back alleys of politics by their own party. But despite a severe bruising in the fall election, this minority within a minority finds itself with new avenues to explore, including working more closely with Democrats.
The Republican Main Street Partnership, a leading voice of GOP moderates in Congress, lost seven of its 48 House members to Democratic challengers in the November election. Two other senior members, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., are retiring.
The group also saw Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., one of its eight Senate members and possibly the most liberal Republican in Congress, get swamped by the Democratic deluge.
"We had some difficult losses, people who had been very vocal and active in terms of being moderates," Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., a Main Street leader, said in an interview. Castle said his group still can be a force in the new Democratic-controlled Congress by working with conservative and moderate Democrats.
Holding one-fifth of the GOP's seats in the House, Republican moderates will be needed by Democrats, particularly on such issues as expanding stem cell research, improving access to health care and promoting alternative energy. Republicans moderates also hold the key to any Democratic hope of overriding vetoes by President Bush.
Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., a Main Street member who also heads an overlapping group of centrists called the Tuesday Group, said he plans to work with the Blue Dogs, conservative House Democrats who are demanding a bigger role in policymaking because of their pivotal role in the elections.
Kirk is promoting a "suburban agenda" that includes such issues as tax-deferred savings programs for children and protecting suburban open space.
The election losses for GOP moderates were all the more painful because moderates on the Democratic ticket flourished, helping carry their party back into the majority. Indiana, a solid red state, went from a 7-2 Republican advantage in the House to a 5-4 Democratic edge because three Democratic moderates ousted conservative incumbents.
"Indiana is really more moderate than it is Republican," said Robert Schmuhl, a political analyst and University of Notre Dame professor. "That is something we learned from the election."
But GOP moderates tend to come from more diverse, Democratic-leaning districts that make them vulnerable when the political winds shift. That was the fate of losing Main Street members Reps. Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson of Connecticut.
Another victim was Rep. Jim Leach, a 15-term lawmaker from Iowa who opposed the war in Iraq and supported abortion rights. Other defeated GOP Main Streeters were Charles Bass and Jeb Bradley of New Hampshire, Sue Kelly of New York and Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania.
Another departed member is Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who resigned in September after it was revealed he had sent sexually explicit electronic messages to former House pages.
Main Street executive director Sarah Chamberlain Resnick said fiscal conservatives in her group who share some views with Democrats on social and environmental issues were also hurt because "the Republican Party wasn't a big enough tent" for them.
While the new Democratic majority ranges in political philosophy from liberal Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi of California to conservative freshman Heath Shuler, a former NFL quarterback from North Carolina, Republicans concentrated on shoring up their conservative base, Resnick said.
"If it all adds up to just appealing to a more conservative base, then we are dealing at the margins in terms of gaining seats," Castle said of fellow Republicans.
Moderates were heartened that Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, considered to be open to all wings of the party, defeated conservative standard-bearer Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., in party leadership elections earlier this month. But Main Street's only spot in the leadership went to Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, one of its more conservative members, who was elected GOP conference vice-chair.
Pence made a name for himself by heading the Main Streeters' conservative counterpart, the Republican Study Committee. It went into the election with 110 members, almost half of all House Republicans. Despite GOP losses in the election of 30-plus seats, the RSC expects to come close to maintaining its current membership level.
Meanwhile, of the 13 Republican freshman in the next Congress, only one, Dean Heller of Nevada, has said he is joining the Main Street caucus.
This says the conservative wing lost very few seats. That is a good thing.
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In California , at a state level, conservative republicans actually replaced a few moderates in the state legislature, but you won't hear about that much either.
Overall no seats actually changed party hands tho.
Inroads have been made, but we need to unload a few more of these scumbag liberal Republicans every time there's a primary rather than shrug our shoulders as we nonchalantly watch them lose in the general elections.
"The Mitt Romney Deception": http://www.alainsnewsletter.com/s/spip.php?article325
B/c it would require more honesty than they possess?
There are a good many decent right-thinking people in CA...
Yes there are.
A lot of them have gotten so fed up with being preached to and stabbed in the back by "their own", many of them have said screw voting,, it's too bad, here's to reclaiming the party and rekindling the fire.
I see it happening...
Why vote for a Main Street GOPer when you could vote for a real Democrat?
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Yup. Rahm Emanuel was smart enough to figure that one out.... and then some.
He was, but he was also lucky, in that Bush's war had made the Pubbies particularly radioactive this past election.
But you're colloquially right in stating 'liberal republican,' that's a stomach turning fact as of Nov. 7, 2006.
They went in as RINOs and handed over power to the socialists.
That too is true... and you only have to win an individual race by 1 vote..
Lincoln Chafee was a Traditional Reagan Republican? Who knew?
Here she says "unite around shared values" and elsewhere is whining about "partisan bickering."
That bickering isn't partisan, IMO, but because her group has moved away from those values.
http://www.republicanmainstreet.org/press111506.htm
PRESS RELEASE
November 15, 2006
America Needs a Strong, United GOP
The Republican Party Should United Around Shared Values
(Washington, D.C.) – "The election of 2006 is over," said Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, Executive Director of the Republican Main Street Partnership. "Now is the time for our party to put aside our differences and unite around shared values. With Democrats in charge in the House and the Senate, now, more than ever, America needs a strong, united Republican Party."
"Our party has a historic opportunity to recapture the middle of the American electorate and build a lasting legislative majority," continued Resnick. "We need to celebrate our ideological diversity and recognize that people of good faith can disagree on complex social issues. The way forward for our party is not to battle over our differences, but to highlight areas where our party is unified."
"Ronald Reagan built a big tent party that attracted conservatives and moderates, Republicans and independents, and people from all across the country. The foundation of this big tent party was a belief in limited government, a commitment to free market economics, and a confident foreign policy," said Resnick. "Now is the time for the GOP to return to those core principles. The American voter is hungry for solutions and we should be the party that provides them."
"The Republican Main Street Partnership is committed to bringing back Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party. Main Street recognizes that the GOP is not monolithic, and for our party to succeed we will need the support of Republicans of all ideological stripes. Our party’s way forward is clear," concluded Resnick.
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The Republican Main Street Partnership (RMSP) is dedicated to promoting and building the Republican Party as a thoughtful, fiscally conservative, inclusive “Governing Majority,” where political debate is encouraged to promote common sense solutions to improve the lives of all Americans. Embracing the full spectrum of Republican ideologies and values in order to build coalitions, RMSP is the largest organization of elected Traditional Ronald Reagan Republicans in the nation, with over 60 members serving in the U.S. House and Senate.
For more information on RMSP, visit our website at www.republicanmainstreet.org.
If you gain the moderates and Independents...what have you gained?
To the 'Main Streeters': what would be wrong with developing America's domestic oil supplies? Unless "centrists" believe the environmental hysteria that humans can possibly bring about global doom, why oppose off shore drilling?
Jim Moran (Moron) is. Check out the website morantics.com
and you will see what a degenerate this slime bucket is.
Exactly! I wish they would join the evil that they truly represent. Make notes and withold funds at election time. Money is the only motivating factor for a Rino...
LLS
"But despite a severe bruising in the fall election, this minority within a minority finds itself with new avenues to explore, including working more closely with Democrats."
They were once a minority in the majority and because of them became the minority within the minority.
Botton line is they are liberals who put an "R" next to their name to get elected. It no longer applies. The Democrats did the Republicans a big favor by weeding out the RINO's. It will take a few years for the Conservatives to bounce back.
Hopefully we will have enough time.
PINK ELEPHANTS...
More like Sesame Street Republicans...
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