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Two Republican Moderates in Senate Worry About Future of GOP

Posted June 1, 2009

Look across America, and you'll understand their alarm. The GOP's advantage in party affiliation among voters peaked in 2003. One recent poll found that 53 percent of Americans are Democratic or Democratic leaners; only 35 percent fell in the Republican camp. Other polls have found that by a big margin, people think congressional Democrats care more about average people than do their GOP counterparts. Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, says what's most disturbing to Republicans is that Obama carried 66 percent of voters under 30. That's a bad omen for the GOP.

If you ask Americans where they reside on the ideological spectrum, most point to the center. In last fall's presidential exit polls, 44 percent described themselves as "moderate," compared with 34 percent who said "conservative" and 22 percent who answered "liberal."

But while most people are centrists, for years the national parties have come under the grip of people on the extreme edges. Specter, in leaving the GOP, identified two contests to make that point. One was the defeat of Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in a 2006 primary contest against liberal challenger Ned Lamont; Lieberman prevailed in the general election as an independent. The other race was Specter's challenge from the right by former House member Pat Toomey, who nearly toppled him in a 2004 primary. Toomey, former president of the anti-tax Club for Growth, has launched another campaign to oust Specter in 2010.

Collins is warily eyeing the Senate Democratic caucus, where centrists are coalescing to flex their muscle. Sixteen lawmakers, led by Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana, Tom Carper of Delaware, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, have formed a moderate working group. Collins says its members are Democrats who have carried Republican-leaning states. "If we don't run moderate Republicans who fit these states," she cautions, "we're going to end up with conservative or moderate Democrats representing them.

Evolution. Over time, parties evolve, expand, and contract, some to the point of extinction. Scholars say the demise of moderate Republicans in the Senate has been occurring since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which triggered defections among Southern Democrats. "You no longer had a Democratic Party in Congress that was roughly one-half Southern conservative and one-half Northern liberal," says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. But with many watching as the South morphed from Democratic to competitive to Republican, less attention was paid to the Republicans dropping off in the Northeast and the West Coast.

Though regions have shifted over time, ideological views are hardening. Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers, looks not only at elected GOP officials but also at their growing "supporting casts" in the world of talk radio, think tanks, opinion journals, and blogs. "Back in the 1940s, it was hard to identify anything like a Republican think tank," he says.

Snowe and Collins, the highest-profile GOP moderates left, insist Obama can't always count on their vote. Neither approved the Democratic budget outline, for example, and both oppose a pro-union measure known as "card check." And each has turned aside pressure by Democrats to leave the GOP. Snowe says there have been several major overtures over the years. "A lot of Democrats will kid me. They'll say, 'Oh, Olympia, you really should be a Democrat.' I tell them I couldn't do it. This is my identity."

Collins agrees. "I would never switch parties," she says. "My DNA is moderate Republican."

With few moderates left in the Senate to bridge a widening chasm, Baker says, it may be that most Senate Republicans are hoping, as conservative talk king Rush Limbaugh exclaimed, that Obama fails. "Although they may dispute the bluntness with which Limbaugh expressed it, I think they probably would agree that their best chance is that Barack Obama falls flat on his face—that credit remains tight, that housing starts remain low, that the market sags," Baker says.

Reader Comments

Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown Continues:

Obama’s attack on our free market economy began long before the current crisis. The following legal documents, news articles, and videos show his part in causing this crisis over the past fifteen years. Now he uses it as an excuse to do even more damage. To him, our free enterprise system is a giant merciless beast that he and his allies have succeeded in wounding. In a free market, your choices as a consumer, select against society’s losers, which he represents. This is why the Obamabots, having won, are still seething with hatred for their opponents. Having wounded the beast they are now closing in for the kill. The recovery of our free market economy is not their objective. They would rather replace it with something else. So their policies are only making matters measurably worse. They want revenge for the unfairness they perceive in the free market.

These legal documents show Barack Obama suing Citibank under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) from 1994 to 1998, where he and other lawyers got $950,000 in legal fees without finding any evidence of wrongdoing:

http://clearinghouse.wustl.edu/chDocs/public/FH-IL-0011-9000.pdf

http://clearinghouse.wustl.edu/chDocs/public/FH-IL-0011-0007.pdf

This was part of a legalized protection racket perpetrated on our nations banks, and part of a widespread systematic shakedown, described in detail in this article published in the year 2000: "The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities":

http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_1_the_trillion_dollar.html

The New York Times reported on this in 2003, and explained what additional regulatory action the Bush administration tried to initiate to protect the banks, in "New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae", only to be blocked by Democrats in congress:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Obama, ACORN, Bill Clinton, the Clinton Administration, and members of congress explain what happened here in their own words in these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN31-nKndg8&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-TyH6Yupso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314

This video connects the dots:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_597487

Thomas Sowell summarized it all in his column, "Do Facts Matter?":

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGRjODM1MTJlOGZiZDk2ODI4NTUzMWMxYjgwMjliMGQ

The Washington Post provides additional detail: ("Where Was Sen. Dodd? Playing the Blame Game On Fannie and Freddie"):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091102841.html

The Wall Street Journal provides additional detail: ("Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess "):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212948811465427.html

This pattern of behavior must be stopped to protect the economic future of our country.

Barry of CA
Aug 03, 2009 13:09:09 PM [permalink] [report comment]

Trent,

Had your read my first comment on this article you would know that I actually advocated the philosophy of Lincoln and Jefferson explicitly. I will re-post my first comment on this article for you again here:

“Katherine Skiba, You wrote:

"Weeks later, Specter, a moderate who had long been courted by Democrats, abandoned the GOP, his home for 43 years, in an about-face that was both stunning and predictable: stunning because he had often insisted that he would never flee his party, and predictable because in doing so he joined a long list of moderate Republican senators who are yesterday's news."

You think it's stunning when a politician breaks his promise? Those of us paying attention to such things think it's stunning if they don't break their promises. For the sake of your own credibility you may want to consider choosing your words more carefully in your pursuit of irony, as I doubt you could be that naive. Obviously Specter knew that his Republican constituents counted his vote on the stimulus package as one betrayal too many. Obama’s promised bipartisanship exists in name only as it depended on such treachery. Apparently Specter had polls showing he could not get re-elected as a Republican after that. Apparently polls showed he had a better chance as a Democrat. He had already switched sides long ago; this just makes it official. Now Republican voters will have the opportunity to vote for a Republican who agrees with them, not a closet Democrat calling himself a Republican.

You wrote:

"And this, she says, isn't good for the GOP's prospects: "We're not going to win presidential elections if we become increasingly a party of white, Southern men.""

I've never been a Southerner, but I'm offended by this constant impulse to categorize people demographically. Is it impossible to discuss the philosophical issues affecting us all, related to how people should govern themselves, or must we always be divided into categories assigned to us by others, and pitted against each other based our demographical or geographical differences, for the purpose of defeating each other? We are united in defense of our certain inalienable rights, but the politicos always want to divide and conquer us. The politics of group identity is profoundly bigoted, and has ravaged Europe, Asia, and Africa for thousands of years. Our ancestors escaped such tribalism coming to this continent. Why must we return to it?

The philosophical beliefs expressed by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln are alive and well, and would be successful if journalists and politicians had any interest to discuss and defend them. Unfortunately, seeing how such an awareness would limit the power of their political class, they go to great lengths to obscure such an understanding.”

Barry of CA
Jul 29, 2009 18:18:21 PM [permalink] [report comment]

The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown Continues: