Will the Moderates Speak Up?

E.J. Dionne has yet another rather depressing, but still must read article in the wapo today. He is taking a cold, realistic look at the place of moderate Republicans in congress. Dionne identifies the same opportunity which exists for moderates that I have pointed out repeatedly on my blog. Unfortunately, he also points out the weakness in any potential strategy by moderates to try to move the party's agenda back towards the middle.

Moderate Republicans win in the blue states by saying they are different from Tom DeLay and other Republican right-wingers. But in Washington, they are punished if they act on what they tell the voters.

Republicans are fine with their members being for abortion rights if that's what they have to tell voters to hold their seats. But such Republicans can expect only resistance if they dare to rise to the top and expect any meaningful influence on the issue.

How long will moderate Republicans accept being kicked around? It's about a lot more than abortion. In the House, DeLay, the party's strongman, won't even let moderate legislation get to the floor. He insists that his party's moderates support internal procedures that cut off all possibility of genuinely bipartisan compromise. Will the moderate Republicans just keep going along?

I do think that his list of moderates (he only lists one Senator and one Rep) is terribly short. Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and two or three others should definitely be included on the Senate side. The House is weaker in moderates as a total percentage, but they are still there in numbers large enough to be reckoned with. The outlook, he feels, is not promising.

Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, isn't expecting much. "With the exceptions of Lincoln Chafee and Jim Leach," says Frank, referring to the Republican senator from Rhode Island and the liberal Republican House member from Iowa, "Republicans will be with us as long as their votes are irrelevant to the outcome." Frank adds: "Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can't do anything because they're tied up in knots."

(Emphasis mine.) That is a very sad, but painfully concise analysis.