The coming election could be dangerous for the GOP's moderates and mavericks

Double whammy for Republicans
The coming election could be dangerous for the GOP's moderates and mavericks.
August 12, 2007

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. —

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is an ardent, unwavering supporter of the Iraq war. In the House of Representatives during the 1990s, he served as a manager of the Republican majority's impeachment case against President Clinton.

Yet for Marty Eells, an emergency medical services training officer here, Graham is an insufficiently reliable conservative. Eells is angered by Graham's criticism of President Bush on issues like the treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism.

"He's made remarks and comments he doesn't have any business making," Eells said.

Other conservatives in this dependably Republican state are unhappy with Graham for supporting the failed Senate effort to legalize illegal immigrants and for his role in the 2005 bipartisan compromise that preserved the right of the Senate minority to filibuster judicial nominees. In the midst of this unease, several local Republicans -- including the lieutenant governor -- have floated the possibility of challenging Graham from the right for the GOP Senate nomination next year.

In Connecticut, Republican Rep. Christopher Shays has a different problem. Last year, he narrowly survived a Democratic tide that left him the sole Republican holding a House seat in all of New England. Now, at a time when disapproval of Bush and the war appears even more intense across the Northeast than it was in 2006, Shays has already attracted a well-funded Democratic opponent (Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs vice president) who will face him in 2008.

Shays and Graham embody the two forms of dissent from the dominant conservative orthodoxy in the modern Republican Party. In one category are traditional moderates like Shays, who pursue a centrist course, especially on social and foreign policy issues, but whose numbers have relentlessly declined for decades. In the second are maverick figures like Graham or Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who are too conservative to be considered moderates but too eclectic and unpredictable to be considered reliable allies by the right. Both of these groups -- moderates and mavericks -- are under siege at a moment when Republicans are struggling to reach independent and swing voters disillusioned by Bush and the war.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-brownstein12aug12,0,3678299.column?coll=la-opinion-center

Unfortunately, as long as the right-wingers are in charge, it seems that the Republican Party will have to collapse before it can be rebuilt. The moderates and mavericks will unfortunately be "collateral damage".

While I feel some sympathy for these moderates and mavericks, their presence as an elected candidate menables their right-wing cohorts to have far more power than they should have. So, they must either leave the party, though I don't know if that would save them, or they will be 'collateral damage".

but the good news is, the whole party is getting farther and farther away from the center. The Dem party should expand as the Repubs shrink, if we can appeal to those moderate GOPer voters who are disillusioned, tired of the incompetence, corruption, and religious dominance of the GOP. I see signs of this with Obama's strong showing among Repub voters in Iowa.