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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/politics/13assess.html?Quote:
Republican Moderates in Senate Sense Pressures
WASHINGTON, May 12 - The unusual pact that permitted the nomination of John R. Bolton to go forward on Thursday without the support of a crucial Republican senator has exposed, in a very raw and public way, the extreme pressures facing Republican moderates in a Senate that is increasingly dominated by conservatives.
President Bush called the dissenting Republican, Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, on Wednesday, the day before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Mr. Voinovich serves, was to take up the nomination, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said.
Karl Rove, the president's powerful political adviser, and Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, also called to chat with Mr. Voinovich in recent weeks, Mr. McClellan said.
And Mr. Voinovich, who has steadfastly refused to answer questions about any discussions with the White House, is hardly the only Republican who is feeling the squeeze these days.
From the fight over Mr. Bolton to the looming blowup over the president's judicial nominees to the debate over the proposal to overhaul Social Security, Republican moderates are caught in the middle as never before. As they look to the near future, to a possible vacancy on the Supreme Court, they realize that the pressures will only intensify.
"Bolton is a perfect example of putting the moderates in an impossible situation," said Senator Lincoln Chafee, the Rhode Island Republican who also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and who agonized publicly over Mr. Bolton for weeks. "It's a no-win. Either we don't support the president or we vote for a very unpopular pick to represent us at the United Nations."
The elections in November put seven new Republicans, nearly all conservatives, in the Senate, increasing the party's majority to 55. As moderate Senate Republicans look out around the country, they are comforted by the ranks of moderate governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, George E. Pataki in New York and Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.
But here in the Capitol, their numbers are so few, said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, that they quit having their weekly lunches about a year ago.
"Susan and I were there alone for so much of the time," Mr. Specter he said, referring to Senator Susan Collins of Maine, "we worked through all of our conversation and decided to disband."
As Mr. Voinovich's refusal to support Mr. Bolton's nomination demonstrates, "the vanishing center"-as another centrist Republican, Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, often says - can still play a powerful role. There are just four core centrists in the Senate, Mr. Chafee, Ms. Collins, Ms. Snowe and Mr. Specter. They are joined from time to time by mavericks like Senators John McCain of Arizona, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mr. Voinovich.
The pressure from the White House and Republican leadership can at times be unrelenting. So much so that some have learned how to pre-empt it.
Mr. Chafee told reporters repeatedly that he was inclined to support Mr. Bolton, a move that his spokesman, Steven Hourahan, said was intended to send a clear signal to the White House about where Mr. Chafee stood.
As a result, Mr. Hourahan said, the senator received just one call from a high-level official. Mr. Card telephoned on the eve of what was supposed to be a committee vote on the nomination. The vote was delayed by Mr. Voinovich, who insisted on having more time to investigate accusations about Mr. Bolton's temperament and management style.
The senator has met administration officials, as well as Mr. Bolton, and has visited with Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader.
But he was careful not to take the White House and the leadership by surprise. In the days leading up to the vote, he informed Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Dr. Frist of his decision. "Senator Voinovich arrived at his decision," said Eric Ueland, Dr. Frist's chief of staff, "and we arrived at the process for moving the nomination to the full Senate."
The next squeeze, for the moderates, will be the explosive question of whether Republican leaders should change Senate rules to bar Democrats from using the filibuster, a two-century-old parliamentary tactic, to block the judicial nominees. Dr. Frist is advocating the change, and a confrontation is widely expected next week.
Mr. McCain and Mr. Chafee have said they will oppose it, and Ms. Snowe has indicated strongly that she will do so, too.
Mr. Specter is in a particularly tight spot. He is trying to remain neutral, but as Judiciary Committee chairman is expected to advocate for the nominees. John Breaux, a centrist Democrat who was in the Senate until last year, said defying party leaders could be especially risky for a committee chairman.
"They can put an awful lot of pressure on you," he said of the leaders. "They say, 'Look, you're a chairman because your party is in control, and you've got to be with the party.' So when you break with them, you have to be fast on foot to explain it."
Ms. Collins, chairwoman of the domestic security committee, is also taking that risk. Along with Ms. Snowe, she has expressed reservations about the rules change, as well as the Social Security plan. Last week, the two returned to Maine to find themselves the targets of an advertising campaign on the judicial nominees, a campaign that had the endorsement of Dr. Frist.
By this week, Ms. Collins seemed a bit worn down by that debate. "It seems like it's issue after issue this year," she said, adding that she often envies "those senators for whom everything is black and white."
Ms. Snowe, meanwhile, had a message for fellow Republicans: "Frankly," she said, "the election of the president drew from Americans who describe themselves as moderates, which is about 45 percent of Americans today. That's something we overlook at our own peril."
I've long of the opinion that moderates should be in the majority in the government, rather than either liberals or conservatives, regardless of political party. Moderates seem more willing to make decisions based on facts and details and try to figure out how to fix problems, whereas liberals and conservatives are prone to blind party loyalty and merely playing the blame game and sanctfying themselves.
We don't need blind loyalists in the government. We need people who will make decisions on their own based on earnestly dicsussing and pondering the issues - something liberal and conservative politicians never seem to do as often as they should.
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At what point, however, is a "moderate" actually a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat?
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I don't think that's an accurate analogy.
The way I see it, Democrats and Republicans fall into three categories: liberal, moderate, and conservative. Liberals are very much on the left, conservatives are very much on the right, and moderates are in the middle. If you're on one side or the other, you can't really be in the middle. So a conservative Democrat is still a conservative, and a liberal Republican is still a liberal. And a moderate of either party is just that - a moderate.
"Well when I talk to people I don't have to worry about spelling." - wannabuyamonkey
"If Schumacher’s last effort was the final nail in the coffin then Year One would’ve been the crazy guy who stormed the graveyard, dug up the coffin and put a bullet through the franchise’s corpse just to make sure." -- From a review of Darren Aronofsky & Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One" script
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So who are the liberal republicans? It seems like every Republican who isn't a conservative is called a moderate.
By the same token, who are the moderate Democrats? It seems like every Democrat who isn't a liberal is called a conservative.
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Quote:
the G-man said:
So who are the liberal republicans? It seems like every Republican who isn't a conservative is called a moderate.
Who's calling them moderates?
Quote:
By the same token, who are the moderate Democrats? It seems like every Democrat who isn't a liberal is called a conservative.
Who's calling them conservative?
In other words, are the labels of "moderate" or "liberal" or "conservative" self-applied, or are other people labelling them?
I ask because when you label someone as a liberal, conservative, or moderate, you may be wrong sometimes. Or you may be labelling based on a certain criteria that may not be universal. I've explained my criteria for being a moderate, but that doesn't mean it's the official criteria.
As for the specific question as to who the moderates in the party are, there may not be any - or if there are, they're few in number. Which is exaclty what I disapprove of. I believe that moderates (the kind I defined earlier) ought to be in the majority rather than the minority - but I know that's not the way it is right now.
"Well when I talk to people I don't have to worry about spelling." - wannabuyamonkey
"If Schumacher’s last effort was the final nail in the coffin then Year One would’ve been the crazy guy who stormed the graveyard, dug up the coffin and put a bullet through the franchise’s corpse just to make sure." -- From a review of Darren Aronofsky & Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One" script
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What happened to the Country Club Republicans? Those who were liberal on social policy but fiscally conservative? I miss sharing martinis and having civilized debates on the issues of the day. Bill Buckley must hold his nose given and say a Hail Mary when he walks into a party function these days.
Gerald Ford was one of them. Probably the only truly nice guy to be President. And his wonderfuly goofey family! It was like the Brady Bunch moved into the White House. Bring back Gerry Ford! The only Republican I've ever voted for!
"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." John Stuart Mill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Oscar Wilde
He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless dead.
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Bill Buckley was one of the leaders of the conservative movement that overthrew the country club republicans.
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Quote:
the G-man said:
Bill Buckley was one of the leaders of the conservative movement that overthrew the country club republicans.
I don't know much about that, but I do know one thing:
There were no blacks in that country club.
Bow ties are coool.
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As governor of Ohio, Voinovich established himself as a textbook moderate, and was a major influence in the formation of my own political understanding. There are very few simple answers in politics, and it's much easier to take a swipe at the opponent's ideas than to focus on solutions that is beneficial to as many parties as possible. Voinovich has historically voted along conservative lines on ethical issues like the abortion debate, but he has done quite a bit to support organized labor (especially when he was governor) and welfare and Social Security reform. I agree that there aren't nearly enough moderates (or more likely that existing moderates are unwilling to vote against the party line) in Congress.
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Quote:
r3x29yz4a said:
Quote:
the G-man said:
Bill Buckley was one of the leaders of the conservative movement that overthrew the country club republicans.
I don't know much about that, but I do know one thing:
There were no blacks in that country club.
You see a lot more now?
"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." John Stuart Mill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Oscar Wilde
He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless dead.
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