Voters Wants Moderates, The GOP Says "No"

Sen. Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic Party is emblematic of the American people’s shift away from the Republican Party. In a time in which the percentage of the population that identify as “Democrat” has increased to 41% while Republicans have stayed put around 32%, and independents have decreased to 27% , it’s apparent that the Republicans are losing the fight for the middle. In some polls, the number of voters self-reporting as Republicans is as low as 20%. What the party needs to recognize is that they are practically throwing that fight. By concentrating on their social conservative, religious base, they are alienating the political moderates of the country, who are then gravitating to a Democratic party that seems to have finally found a solid message behind a leader with the political trifecta of being intelligent, eloquent, and charismatic. While it may be true that Arlen Specter’s defection may have been motivated more by self-interest and likelihood of re-election, it doesn’t change the fact that the Republican Party put him in the position in which political moderates in their state are handling the Republican Party and its positions like a poisonous snake. His chances of winning a primary against Pat Toomey may have been poor, but the chances of either Toomey or Specter beating a Democratic challenger in the increasingly blue state of Pennsylvania, with a popular Democratic Governor and President, are even worse. I’m sure that the prospect of a nasty primary battle for the chance to get trounced in the general election was quite unattractive to Sen. Specter.

This is an ongoing trend with the Republican Party. The Club for Growth has been systematically targeting and eliminating moderates from the party, it’s a miracle that John McCain hasn’t come under fire. The result has typically been that moderate Republicans have lost primary battles, only to see general elections lost to the Democrats. Other moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins could be vulnerable to the same kind of attack, and there is already speculation that they could be the next to switch parties. Perhaps the most disturbing trend is that by and large, even after the humiliating PR disaster of the defection of a Senator that could hand the opposition a filibuster-proof majority, the Republican Party has refused any wrongdoing. Party leadership, including RNC Chairman Michael Steele, places all the blame on Senator Specter. There is no indication that more Republican moderates won’t come under fire or that anything in the party is going to change.

The fundamental problem with the approach of the Republican Party is their misread and misunderstanding of the American public at large. With the residual leadership of figures like Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, the party is still dedicating to lobbing “socialist” charges like it’s 1954, not recognizing that the for the last decade the American public has seen religious fanaticism (e.g. Al Qaeda) as the primary threat in the world and that the communism just doesn’t have the same weight that it once had. These older political figures are still influenced by their formative years with the Korean War, Castro, and Joe McCarthy. They don’t realize that to evoke fear of religious fanaticism and then become the party of the religious right is self-defeating. The Republican Party needs new leadership that is in touch with the American people today and tomorrow. All political parties need to think four, eight, twelve years in the future. By attacking moderate politicians in the party, they are alienating moderates across the country, and independents tend to be moderates.

Republicans like Steve Schmidt and Meghan McCain have taken a great deal of political risk by advocating for change in the party’s social agenda and smart Senators like Lindsey Graham have preached the need for a more inclusive party. The bottom line is that Obama and the Democrats won a mandate from the people because the majority of the country wants the policies on which Obama ran. They also continue to attack Obama on all fronts, refusing to recognize that he is the most popular president since FDR. It is the most fundamental strategy to attack your opponent’s weak points, and the Democratic Party's weak point is definitely not Obama. It makes more sense to draw attention to the far left fringe of the party. Despite claims on the right, Obama is a moderate, his careful balancing act (refusing to nationalize the banks, reopening terror tribunals, even his his health care plan is more conservative than Hillarycare), places him to the right of the Democratic Party. So when Republicans call him extremely liberal, it serves to make them look like they are coming from the extreme right. It also makes sense to stop routinely casting ineffectual “no” votes, it would be more productive for the party and the country for Republicans to engage in a bipartisan effort to shape the implementation of these policies to ensure that they are effective. Democrats will be happy to work with a group of rational Republicans in order to demonstrate their bipartisanship. The Republican Party should co-opt parts of the Democratic agenda, and take credit for any success while shifting the blame for any failures.

The country needs the Republican Party, the Democratic Party can definitely swing too far to the left and we need the balance and stabilizing influence of the right. As long as they remain completely ineffectual, the country will suffer.