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Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

The Middle Is The Message

The season of their discontent, or how the moderates got snookered, got mad, got out

NEWSWEEK - by Anna Quindlen

May 21 issue � Robert Pennoyer registered as a Republican in 1946. He is partial to quoting from a bronze medal given to his father to commemorate the centennial of the party, engraved with a quotation from Dwight D. Eisenhower, in whose administration the younger Pennoyer served for six years. �In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human,� he reads aloud in his New York City law office. �In all those things which deal with the people�s money or their economy or their form of government, be conservative.� It seems a good way to sum up his political philosophy, and to explain why he just sent out the form that will change his party affiliation, at the age of 76, from Republican to Democrat. �I�m making a clean break,� he says.

Moderate Republicans have felt under siege for years now, but for some of them the first hundred days of Bush II have been the last straw. For Barbara Gimbel of the department-store family, a longtime centrist party activist, it was actually the third day that did it, when the president made his social-policy debut by blocking aid to overseas family-planning organizations that offer abortion counseling. The day after that decision was announced, a fund-raising lunch was held in Dallas for Planned Parenthood. Among the hundreds in the hotel ballroom were many moderate Republicans, friends of reproductive freedom and even of the new president, who had quietly assured one another during the campaign that George was no right-wing zealot. Some of them looked as though they�d been hit over the head with a board.

Being a moderate is tougher than it looks. The conservatives and liberals get to blow hot and cold, extravagantly. Moderates get to be�well, moderate. �People whisper, �I�m with you�,� says Lynn Grefe, who runs the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition. �We have to stop whispering.� But moderation is not a position that lends itself to shouting, to buttons or bumper stickers, pressure groups or press conferences. And being a Republican moderate has, in recent years, seemed more and more like an oxymoron. When Mrs. Gimbel began working on party politics in Nelson Rockefeller�s gubernatorial campaign, moderation was the party�s middle name; the reason Barry Goldwater�s 1964 campaign crashed and burned was that he was seen as too reactionary. �In your heart, you know he�s right� was Goldwater�s slogan, countered by another: �In your guts, you know he�s nuts.�

But, as Gloria Steinem likes to remind people, conservative Democrats like Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan vaulted party lines and took over the Republicans, and so we find ourselves here, with the former guru of the Christian Coalition running the state party in Georgia, an anti-abortion activist running the federal Office of Personnel Management and arsenic replacing the vegetable ketchup as the GOP nutritional additive of choice. The Bush White House is basking in the glow of the president�s approval ratings�although it might behoove everyone to remember how high Ann Richards�s approval ratings were when Bush beat her in the Texas gubernatorial race�but there are signs of conspicuous slippage. In the last month the president�s unfavorable ratings jumped by double digits among young people, women and especially those who describe themselves as moderates.

The Bush team, many of whom have been inside the Republican power bubble since the Punic Wars, may not be entirely clear on the difference between moderate and liberal positions circa 2001. A NEWSWEEK Poll done earlier this year provides an easy road map. More than half of those surveyed were unhappy about the suggestion that the administration might close the White House offices on AIDS and race relations, and half objected, like Mrs. Gimbel, to the end of aid to those overseas family-planning groups. And nearly half didn�t like the president�s plan to open protected parts of the Alaskan wilderness for oil exploration. When the president seemed cavalier about greenhouse gases, carbon-dioxide emissions and arsenic levels in water, conservative advisers may have thought he would anger only the Sierra Club. But in the years since environmentalists were first denigrated as tree huggers, America�s fields have been filled with numbingly identical town-house communities, some towns have come to rely on bottled water for consumption and California is being hit with rolling blackouts. A recent Gallup poll found that a stunning four out of five Americans support tougher pollution standards for industry.

But it is not just his conservative ideology that has turned moderates against the president. The masquerade of the campaign, in which both candidates acted like people moving through a house with an alarm system trying not to set off the motion detectors, has left the gullible feeling snookered. �Bush has been great for our fund-raising because people feel so betrayed,� says Lynn Grefe. �They have been stunned at how different he is from the campaign message.� Nevertheless, the president will continue to try to sell that message. Reports of ebbing support are filled with suggestions that he will now tack to the center, or shore up the middle. The point of all this tacking and shoring is clear: the next election.

No person of either party can win the presidency without a substantial number of moderates, who by their own description make up 50 percent, give or take a few percentage points, of all Americans. It was only when Bill Clinton dragged them kicking and screaming to the middle of the road that Democrats got two terms in the White House. Richard Nixon called these people the silent majority, but unless they can make their peace with being sold one thing in a campaign and then having to live with something far different and far less desirable, they had better find a way to speak up in the modern din of political discourse. And unless they want many more defections like those of Barbara Gimbel and Robert Pennoyer, the leaders of the Republican Party had better find a way to listen.

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

That's cute. I defected last year, too, after having been a registered Democrat since I was 18.

To Republican, because I was sick of eight years of nonsense politics and messages without any substance to them, sick of the total lack of any ploicy for anything, sick of filegate and monicagate and whitewater and chinese money, Wen Ho Lee and Charlie Trih, and 'I didn't know it was a fundraiser' and ever-encroaching taxes.

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The government that seems the most unwise, oft goodness to the people best supplies. That which is meddling, touching everything, will work but ill, and disappointment bring. - The Tao Te Ching

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :

Interesting. I suppose certain people here will now state that these people are not proper Republicans. . .

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Phasers

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

I note that quote "has left the gullible feeling snookered."

By that simple statement, she lets her true feelings for the 'moderates' shine through.

What she's really saying is: "We've got to get the gullible people BACK on the Democratic side, or we might NEVER win again!

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

"...many of whom have been inside the Republican power bubble since the Punic Wars..."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That's too damn funny. I was AT the Punic Wars (one AND two, thank you...have my tour T-shirts from both). I can't think of any Republican who was there, although Reagan might have been a possibility. But I DO remember a far-younger J. Strom Thrumond standing tall & proud on the plains of Carthage. His hairline was receding even then & he was stil unintelligible, but he drooled a lot less.

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"Boinky ensued, and a great time was had by all." --Book of Nigel, Chapter 4, verse 32

Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

First: Did they send anyone to pick you up at the other side of the border?

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old men's heads are just as bare;
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lies a haircut and a shave."

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Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

Actually, First, it probably refers to the Bush campaign promising to be moderates, and then rolling out a far(ther) right agenda once in office.

As opposed to Clinton, who actually oversaw a very moderate term. Sadly.

Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :

Bah JK!! Bah I say.

As Michael Moore put it, 'Clinton was the best Republican president since Lincoln.'

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I'll kill you, you bloated museum of treachery!
~ C. Montgomery Burns

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

Shhhh, Jay! Don't tell the Republicans!

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

GOP Senator Set to Become Independent

Jeffords of Vermont to Announce Plans in His Home State

By LARRY MARGASAK
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (May 24) - Republican control of Congress and President Bush's political agenda teetered Thursday on the GOP's ability to persuade Vermont Sen. James Jeffords that the party still has room for moderates.

Senate colleagues, the White House and lobbyists nervously awaited Jeffords' decision on leaving the Republican Party, while considering the consequences if Democratic control replaced the delicate sharing of power that has guided a Senate split between 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats this year.

Jeffords informed associates and aides that he would become an independent and align himself with the Democratic caucus, according to officials familiar with the conversations. If the moderate Vermont Republican, who planned a morning announcement in Vermont, does go independent, his exit would end five months of near political parity.

Since President Bush took office, Republicans managed the Senate agenda but Democrats possessed unusual powers for a minority under a bipartisan power-sharing agreement.

Jeffords' move would bring Democratic proposals on health care, education, the minimum wage and other issues to the forefront. There would be new committee chairmen and a new majority leader. It would be the first time party control of the Senate has changed between elections.

Democrats who relished the change and Republicans who tried to dissuade Jeffords understood this was a seminal moment for the Senate.

''It's not only just chairmanships. It's staff, the country, the presidency. We're not just talking about a singular moment,'' said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a moderate and close friend of Jeffords.

''This isn't about a single Senate seat,'' said Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J. ''It's about controlling the legislative agenda ... and it's about the federal judiciary. This is an enormous shift of influence in the federal government.''

Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., one of the GOP veterans who tried to keep Jeffords a Republican, said the Vermonter thought about his decision with a sense of history and urgency in mind.

''He was thinking ... about the effects upon the country, the Senate and governance in this country,'' Lugar said. And he was ''probably reflecting on 20 years of public life in which he has felt many rebuffs and much disappointment.''

With Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota leading a Democratic majority, the party could thwart Bush's conservative judicial nominees, including future selections for the Supreme Court that could affect generations of Americans.

Democrats would become committee chairmen, controlling the pipeline of legislation moving to the full Senate.

Jeffords' loss also would be a defeat for Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who began the year and this week as majority leader.

Lott defended Jeffords several years ago when conservatives upset with his liberal voting habits wanted to replace him as chairman of a Senate committee.

''This is a significant embarrassment for Lott, partly because he and Jeffords were good friends,'' said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst with the American Enterprise Institute.

Lott offered Jeffords an appointed leadership position in an attempt to retain his GOP membership, also promising more money for favored education programs and a waiver of term limits to let him remain chairman of the Education Committee beyond the end of next year.

At the same time, Senate aides also said Jeffords had approved staff meetings with Democrats to discuss preparations for taking over the chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee, the post Democrats were offering if he would bolt the GOP.

The blame game began among Republicans as soon as it became clear that Jeffords' unhappiness with his party's move to the right became an immediate crisis.

''We have no one to blame but ourselves,'' said GOP consultant John Weaver, who clashed with the Bush team as a presidential campaign adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the attempts to persuade Jeffords to remain in the fold ''were a little late in coming.''

GOP sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said top White House adviser Karen Hughes conducted a conference call with congressional GOP aides Wednesday, telling them the White House wouldn't be pointing fingers of blame, and she hoped they wouldn't either.

Jeffords' relations with the White House have been strained for weeks. He backed reductions in Bush's original 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax cut in favor of increasing federal support for education.

He was among the moderates of both parties who advocated changing Bush's proposal, so that more of tax cut would go to Americans with more moderate incomes. With those changes made, Jeffords voted with the majority Wednesday in the 62-38 Senate passage of an 11-year, $1.35 trillion tax relief package.

Jeffords also let it be known he was unhappy not to be invited to a teacher of the year ceremony at the White House following his earlier vote on the Bush tax plan. The recipient was from Vermont, and he is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

I'll make this clear that if Jeffords does align himself with the Democrats, the Democrats should NOT be putting one-sided policies in Congress, simply because they would now control it. Republican input and compromise should be allowed in policies, not just Democrat-centric ideas.

I'm seeing this because I don't want the Democrats to be seen as opportunists. They would pay dearly as a consequence in the next congressional elections.

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :

I was quite surprised that British MPs could switch parties - after all, most of the time they get elected as a result of people voting for them because of the party they represent. It amazes me that US Senators can too. . .

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access to them, a speculation would be that Draal will use them
against Morden in the future. However if Draal only has a purple
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Phasers

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Since a fair number of the Democratic Senators now represent states that voted for Bush, it would be very politically unwise for them to be seen as obstructing his actions... assuming they want to be re-elected.

Not that this will stop them. I fully expect the in-fighting and petty bickering to increase exponentially should the Dems win control. Especially after the number of weakening 'amendments' that they tried to tack on to the tax cut bill.

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :

Like the situation was any different when their positions were reversed. . .

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Phasers

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

And the Democratic Party now controls the Senate.

Woohoo!

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

"I was AT the Punic Wars (one AND two, thank you...have my tour T-shirts from both)."

What, you couldn't make it to the third one?

"I was quite surprised that British MPs could switch parties - after all, most of the time they get elected as a result of people voting for them because of the party they represent. It amazes me that US Senators can too. . ."

Yes, well... When people vote like that, we're all pretty well screwed, anyway, eh?

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