With Dems in Left Field, Republicans Should Play to the Center

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s termination of what can best be described as a brief and politically-convenient fling with the Republican Party ought to surprise no one. After all, he had been hinting for quite some time at an independent run for the White House next year. While his status as a Republican allowed him to ride his predecessor’s coattails to become mayor of America’s largest city, he fit in about as well with most in the party as I do in a room full of drunk coeds. His exit from the Republican Party is important not for what it means to his future but to the future of the party’s rapidly shrinking center.

Whatever you may think of his real compatibility with the Republican Party, Mike Bloomberg represents a certain wing of the party that is struggling to maintain their place at the table. These are the descendants of Rockefeller, Scranton, Nixon, and Ford who are at odds for being moderate or even liberal on certain issues that have defined the party platform since the 1980’s. They are pro-choice, pro-green deficit hawks who often defy their more conservative members on stem cell research and gay marriage. The losers in the schism that doomed the party in the election of 1964, they are now the ones who, for better or worse, argue for “big tent” inclusion against right-wing extremism.

The election of 2006 didn’t help GOP moderates whose ranks were further depleted by retirement and defeat. Jim Kolbe of Arizona, the House’s lone openly-gay Republican retired, Michigan’s Joe Schwarz was beaten in his primary, and Connecticut’s Nancy Johnson- a founding member of the Republican Main Street Partnership- was knocked off on election night. She, however, was not alone: six other moderate Republican Congressmen and Senator Lincoln Chafee joined Johnson’s involuntary return to the private sector. The fate of elected Republican moderates is not nearly as dire however as those who do the electing. This became apparent in the recent primary debate in Manchester, New Hampshire when a self-proclaimed moderate asked candidates what they would do to reach out to the party’s center. The recent midterms further illustrate how Karl Rove’s strategy of getting out the base on Election Day, while successful through three elections, has led to the party moderates being ignored or abandoned.

Perhaps the most intriguing question through all of this is: what should happen if this group of moderates resurfaces and is successful in nominating one of its own to the presidency? Rudy Giuliani is the current Republican favorite and possesses a pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-gun control record (though you wouldn’t know it now by asking him). Many on the right are cringing at the possibility of a Republican candidate who would uphold Roe v. Wade, or at the very least not go out of his way to try to overturn it. What then should happen if the two (or even three with Bloomberg) presidential candidates are all moderate or liberal on social issues? Would this lead to a Sam Brownback or a Pat Buchanan-like candidate bolting the GOP and running as an independent himself? It’s not nearly as far-fetched as it may at first seem: back in 2000 a Pat Robertson autodialer warned South Carolina Republicans not to vote for anybody if John McCain won the nomination.

As history (1912, 1964, and 1976) has shown, factional schism is poison to the Republican Party. It would seem in a race of such consequence that the Republicans have all hands on deck to beat whoever the Democrats come up with. I shouldn’t have to say again that the Democrats have a distinct advantage at this early point in the campaign. What’s more, 2006 proves the Republicans can’t simply rely on their conservative base alone to win, especially with that base becoming increasingly angry with the party itself. Furthermore, Republicans can no longer count on Democrats to beat themselves (or herself) and will have to win 2008 on their own merits with a candidate who is more than he is not. If Republicans hope to win with the right it needs first to reconcile with its center.