Petaluma, Ca. writer Keith Thompson's widely-noted SF Chron op-ed earlier this year, ""Leaving The Left," led to an excellent follow-up blog post by Thompson on consumer awareness of the Republican agenda. That got under my skin, and I mean that in a good way. Commenting on Thompson's post "Free To Leap," and a Knight-Ridder piece on the importance of Republican moderates, I wrote:

If the filibuster shoe were on the other foot, and the GOP was in the minority, trying to block a Democratic president's appointees, conservatives would be howling to preserve the filibuster, and not sacrifice it even to let three detested nominees through the turnstile, as Senate Democrats did. The Schiavo thing was utter and total overkill, right-wing posturing run amok. As far as federal funding for (ed.-embryonic) stem-cell research, it may be tantamount to supporting abortion in the minds of some pro-lifers, but to many others it amounts to a legitimate investment in medical research that could eventually help cure diseases and save lives. The inflamed arguments from The Right on these issues may be heart-felt, but they are alienating to many swing voters.

Politics is the art of the possible; you have to leave a few things out of your shopping cart at check-out time. You've only got so much political capital to spend, even as a majority party. Republican moderates, willing to buck the party's intemperate, politically greedy right wing, are my kind of Republicans.

I will define whether I am a Republican or not; and I am one....Some party hack isn't going to tell me I don't make the team because I'm not outraged over federal funding for stem-cell research, because I'm pro-choice, or because I don't lie up nights plotting Arlen Specter's demise. I think Republicans need to reach out to those who simply call themselves "conservatives," and be ready to talk to self-declared, unaffiliated "moderates" as well. "Leaving The Left" doesn't necessarily mean Embracing The Right.

Yes. Well.

Today, in the Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius warns Republicans against pandering to the base. His advice is already well-understood in places such as Washington state, where Republicans nearly elected a moderate Republican governor last year, Dino Rossi, and where the formerly red suburbs have turned solidly purple. But to me, thousands of miles from the Beltway and from what I guess I'd call the "Back East" MSM, all the sturm and drang on social issues and party intrigue is marginal, to say the least.

Defending Terry Schiavo's right to life; defending Tom DeLay; and now the incessant caterwauling about Bush 43's SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers not appearing to be sufficiently committed to overturning Roe v. Wade. The signal-to-noise ratio is declining precipitously.

Here's Ignatius:

The hard right, which is the soul of the modern GOP, would rather be ideologically pure than successful. Governing requires making compromises and getting your hands dirty, but the conservative purists disdain those qualities. They swim for that beach with a fiercely misguided determination, and they demand that the other whales accompany them....The awkward fact for conservatives is that the American public doesn't agree with them on abortion rights. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in late August found 54 percent describing themselves as pro-choice and only 38 percent as pro-life, roughly the same percentages as a decade ago.

....Bush and the Republicans had a chance after 2004 to become the country's natural governing party. They controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. The Democrats were in utter disarray, leaderless and idea-less. When Bush took the podium in January to deliver his soaring second inaugural address, the future seemed to belong to the Republicans.

Bush squandered this opportunity by falling into the trap that has snared the modern GOP -- of playing to the base rather than to the nation. The Republicans behave as if the country agrees with them on issues, when that demonstrably isn't so. The country doesn't agree about Social Security, doesn't agree about the ethical issues that were dramatized by the torment of Terri Schiavo, doesn't agree about abortion. Yet, in a spirit of blind partisanship, House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced last year that bills would reach the floor only if "the majority of the majority" supported them. That notion of governing from the hard right was a recipe for failure.

....Principles are a fine thing, but a narrow, partisan definition of principle has led the Republicans to a dead end. Their inability to transcend their base and speak to the country as a whole is now painfully obvious. Like the Democrats in their years of decline, they are screaming at each other -- not realizing how far they have drifted from the mid-channel markers that have always led to open waters and defined success in American politics.

It's only on Social Security that I don't agree with Ignatiuis' prescription. Otherwise he's on the money.

Mobilizing the evangelicals was crucial to Bush's winning a second term, but the party can't go forward in chains. Rs of all stripes share concerns on fostering global liberty, fighting terrorism and boosting national securit. Other priorities include expanding school choice, and somehow - whew! - still vastly improving federal fiscal discipline.

A tall order, but right and good.

From where I sit in Central Puget Sound, I draw a line on the social conservative agenda. I endorse parental notificiation laws for minors seeking an abortion; and the right of any state's legislature, or now voters, to define marriage as between a man and woman. The Left risks continued marginalization by crying "coathangers and back-alleys" in the first instance, and "homophobe" in the second. But, beyond that, Rs should steer clear of the hot-button social issues.

The key policy concerns here - especially as the population of the three largest Seattle-area counties grows from 3 million now to 4 million by 2020 and 5 million by 2050 - are at once regional, local, and (one hopes) essentially non-partisan.

Transportation gridlock, and terrorism prevention (think Seattle and Tacoma's large ports and Washington State Ferries) are near the top of the list. So is maintaining quality of life as urban density is ratched up weekly, and that even includes - no, make that especially includes seemingly minor "broken windows" priorities. Also key: putting core government services ahead of social engineering; fostering economic development and finding a way back to school choice in Washington state. The national party must make a better effort: to speak to those issues (sometimes by example, as on belt-tightening); to steer party donors to urban and regional candidates who speak to those issues; and to help develop a better game plan for the suburbs and cities, with bottom-up input from the Republican moderates who are trying to carve out a decent life in America's cities and increasingly purple suburbs.

Because in the end, it's not about the mega-churches.

TECHNORATI TAGS: REPUBLICAN MODERATES, SEATTLE, PUGET SOUND

TO COMMENT: The regular "comment" feature is not in operation. E-mail comments to address under "Contact" on main page masthead, and I'll add them, here.

Tom Rekdal: On policy issues, I think your assessment of where the GOP should be is about right. But I am still puzzled by the way in which both you and David Ignatius attribute the GOP's strategic weakness to its too close association with social conservatives. That alliance has always been a delicate balancing act, but never a fatal attraction.

Howard Fineman is closer to the mark, I believe, in attributing the "conservative crackup" to a growing sense among Right-wingers, and I imagine the country generally, that the Bush administration has collapsed into a puddle of cronyism and incompetence, while the congressional wing of the party continues to engage in the very pigs-at-the-trough behavior for which it was supposed to be the antidote.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at October 12, 2005 12:45 PM