BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Monday, August 30, 2004
PRAGUE SPRING? Earlier today I took part in a media conference call with some of the
founding members of Mainstream
2004, a group of
self-described moderate Republicans who are seething over the
right-wing extremism that has come to dominate their party. The
organization debuted with a splash today, taking out a full-page ad
in the New York Times.
"We're seeing a Republican Party
that's being taken over by some pretty hardcore activists at the
grassroots level who are often way out of the mainstream of the
communities they are from," said former Arizona attorney general
Grant Woods. He went on to call the right-wingers folks who "don't
have anything better to do" than to engage in political activism,
while the people who should be the heart and soul of the Republican
Party are engaged in more-normal endeavors - like working.
Like the others who spoke, Woods
was particularly exercised over the modern Republican Party's sorry
record on the environment and on outreach to African-Americans and
other minority communities.
The organization's agenda sounds
like that espoused by most Democrats: environmental protection;
fiscal responsibility; ending barriers to stem-cell research;
appointing "mainstream federal judges"; enhancing domestic security
at chemical and nuclear plants and in shipping; and rebuilding
alliances to "restore America's standing in the world."
Yet these Republicans, at least as
a group, will not go so far as to renounce George W. Bush's
re-election campaign. Woods allowed only that he's backing a
hoped-for presidential run by his home-state senator John McCain in
2008. Former Michigan governor William Milliken declined to say who
he plans to vote for, saying he has "severe misgivings" about Bush
but adding, "I don't see in John Kerry at this stage the answer to
all the problems that confront us inside the country and
internationally."
The exception was Rick Russman, a
former member of the New Hampshire Senate, who said he's decided to
support Kerry if only "because I think the party needs to lose a few
elections" to find its bearings again.
In some ways, the group - rounded
out by former New Mexico governor David Cargo - sounded like New
England Republicans. For some years now, the region's moderate
Republican senators have been a thorn in the side of the national
Republican Party, standing for an old-fashioned mix of fiscal
conservatism and social liberalism. This movement is epitomized by
Maine's two GOP senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, as well as
by Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee. Vermont senator Jim Jeffords even
went so far to change his affiliation from Republican to independent
a few years ago to protest his party's march to the right.
Given that background, I asked
Russman whether he thought the New England Republican Party had
anything to teach the national party. "I'd like to see some of our
leaders, like these senators from Maine and others, take the lead in
that and try to take the party back to the mainstream," he responded.
"There's got to be a critical mass that says the pendulum's gone too
far. We're starting to lose a great number of people."
That's probably an exaggeration.
But there's no question that the hard-right extremists are
out-of-touch with mainstream, independent voters, and Karl Rove knows
it. That's why this week's speakers are heavy on moderates such as
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, former mayor Rudy Giuliani,
and McCain. As Woods said, if party leaders wanted to show their true
face, "they should have Tom DeLay deliver the principal
speech."
Still, though the Mainstream 2004
folks may be in touch with the electorate-at-large, there's not much
evidence that they're in touch with modern Republicanism. Everyone
who spoke during the conference call today was a former
officeholder. Cargo shone the best possible light on that, saying,
"We can really tell it like it is." But their status only served to
underscore the sense that there is no place for them in today's
GOP.
Milliken praised this
New York Times op-ed piece by former US senator Ed Brooke, a
Massachusetts Republican, an African-American, and a liberal. Brooke
warned that the 2004 convention may be shaping up, in its
"extremism," like the one that nominated Barry Goldwater 40 years
ago. Yet what neither Milliken nor Brooke want to admit is that
today's GOP - which is far to the right of what Goldwater could even
have imagined, or wanted - is thriving and winning
elections.
I was unable to get an immediate
reaction from the Republican National Committee; if I receive one,
I'll post it. What I was hearing from the dissident moderates,
though, sounded like the Republican version of 1968's Prague Spring.
The difference is that the Rove gang won't have to roll in the tanks
- certainly not this year, and maybe not ever. Woods himself said
that the focus is on the long-term. Yet both major parties are
becoming more ideological, not less. It's hard to see how Mainstream
2004 is going to change that.
posted at 2:47 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
