I think the numbers of Dems who can comfortably run as prolifers is diminishing and the number of Republicans who can run as prochoice is increasing. I see the people who are in the minority of each party complaining about different things; on the GOP side, the complaint is that the platform isn’t inclusive but those who disagree still have a place at the table, at least when it comes to representing more moderate districts. It’s on the Democratic side that I see people saying that the platform is becoming more restrictive and that litmus tests are being applied to keep individuals from expressing views that differ from the platform.

I said that no one in the Republican party who has any real influence and power had anything but anti-choice views. Your list only proves my point. Everyone you listed are technically Republicans, but in reality are treated like pariahs and constantly have the rest of the party trying to replace them with more orthodox candidates. They are not accepted by the rest of the party and respected for their principles. And it’s also interesting that the articles you cite both go back to 2004. In case you haven’t noticed I was correct about my comments about Schwarzenneger in fact not being popular with the other Republicans in California. You say that you imagine that they aren’t happy with the party platform. Why do you have to imagine? Because these token moderates keep very, very quiet on the issue. It’s the only way they survive in the party. By not standing up for what they believe. So I think that the parties are pretty equal in that regard, don’t you?

And there are literally millions of votes at stake in this liberal miscalculation. Virtually everywhere I go, I encounter moderate and progressive Christians who find it painfully difficult to vote Democratic given the party’s rigid, ideological stance on this critical moral issue, a stance they regard as “pro-abortion.” Except for this major and, in some cases, insurmountable obstacle, these voters would be casting Democratic ballots.

Ironically, the Republicans, who actively and successfully court the votes of Christians on abortion, are much more ecumenical in their own toleration of a variety of views within their own party. For example, fellow Republicans have not enforced anti-abortion orthodoxies on their rising new star, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose pro-choice views seem not to be a problem. Indeed, there is now a long list of pro-choice Republicans whose support the party seems to regard as crucial to its success. The Republican Party takes a very strong anti-abortion stance in its party platforms but then allows for a wide variety of opinions based on either conscience or pragmatic political calculations.

But to be a “pro-life” Democrat is to be a very lonely political creature in America, as U.S. Catholic’s Heidi Schlumpf explains in our cover feature. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, a pro-life Catholic, was denied the opportunity to speak at the 1992 and 1996 Democratic conventions. It didn’t matter that Casey was progressive on economic and foreign policy questions and an outspoken supporter of women’s rights; he didn’t have the right position on abortion. Former Ohio Rep. Tony Hall, an evangelical Christian, experienced similar discrimination as a pro-life Democrat despite being perhaps the most courageous congressional champion on issues of hunger and poverty. The Democratic National Committee refuses even to allow a link on its Web site for pro-life Democrats.

and this one (yes, it’s from a conservative publication but written by Kristin Day, the ED of Democrats for Life):
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/day200412020833.asp

And you named Giuliani as though he were some kind of outlier- but I can also name Christie Todd Whitman, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mary Bono, Michael Castle and Chris Shays (and there are others currently in office, as well as some who lost their seats like Lincoln Chaffee).

I imagine some or all of them aren’t happy with the current GOP platform statement on this issue, and there are groups pushing for it to be changed to be more inclusive. However, on the Dem side, obviously those who wanted the platform to be inclusive of the pro-life side have lost out to those who decided to strike the inclusive language for the ’04 platform.

And who on the Dem side has the courage to differ with the NARAL position- other than offering meaningless sayings like “abortion should be legal but rare”? Harry Reid is the only prolife Dem I can think of. If there are others, feel free to inform me.

The ideologues exist in the Democratic party. But they run the Republican party. Here is the official Republican Party Platform statement on abortion.

We must keep our pledge to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence. That is why we say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

We oppose abortion, but our pro-life agenda does not include punitive action against women who have an abortion. We salute those who provide alternatives to abortion and offer adoption services, and we commend Congressional Republicans for expanding assistance to adopting families and for removing racial barriers to adoption.

How many Republicans who run the party and determine its future path have to endorse this? How long has it been in the platform? And here’s a classic, part of the actual text of Roe V. Wade.

3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother’s behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman’s qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman’s health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a “compelling” point at various stages of the woman’s approach to term. Pp. 147-164.

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician. Pp. 163, 164.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health. Pp. 163, 164.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164-165.

In other words, a properly crafted law that did not attempt to overreach in the name of being “pro-life” should be perfectly capable of being moderate and limiting access to abortion in accordance with the court’s decision. But that isn’t what the Republican party has endorsed, is it? So no, I do not consider the position of the people running the Republican party to be moderate on this issue. And neither does anyone else outside of the anti-choice camp.

The push for purity is alive and well in both parties.

And on issues like abortion, sorry, but I don’t subscribe to the definitions according to Jim Satterfield for whether or not a position is moderate. I assume on abortion you’re talking about polling data, but some of that is often misread (because of the way the questions are posed) and more importantly, I’m not talking about how the public polls on any given issue. There is an abstract center point on ideology, when you apply a philosophy to any particular issue. For abortion, neither pure ‘prochoice’ or pure ‘prolife’ represents that ideological center, obviously. Some compromise position which would allow states (or the federal govt if a constitutional amendment were sought) to limit access to the procedure of abortion based on some acknowledgement of right to life for an unborn human at some stage of gestation. We could quibble on where that line would be drawn to make it a dead center position, but that most certainly defines a ‘moderate’ or compromise view better than your assertion that assigning any right to life is automatically a very conservative position.

The push for purity is alive and well in both parties.

And on issues like abortion, sorry, but I don’t subscribe to the definitions according to Jim Satterfield for whether or not a position is moderate. I assume on abortion you’re talking about polling data, but some of that is often misread (because of the way the questions are posed) and more importantly, I’m not talking about how the public polls on any given issue. There is an abstract center point on ideology, when you apply a philosophy to any particular issue. For abortion, neither pure ‘prochoice’ or pure ‘prolife’ represents that ideological center, obviously. Some compromise position which would allow states (or the federal govt if a constitutional amendment were sought) to limit access to the procedure of abortion based on some acknowledgement of right to life for an unborn human at some stage of gestation. We could quibble on where that line would be drawn to make it a dead center position, but that most certainly defines a ‘moderate’ or compromise view better than your assertion that assigning any right to life is automatically a very conservative position.

Some will point to Giuliani as proof that I am wrong. I say we’ll discuss him if he actually gets the nomination and the religious conservatives don’t abandon the party in droves. What is said now in 2007 and what is said where it counts by votes can be two very different things. Some will point at Schwarzenneger and my response is to notice how his fellow California Republicans attacked him and his postions after his speech at a recent gathering.

Then there is health care. Most people outside of ideologue Republican circles realize that many things are broken and the markets aren’t about to fix them. Appealing to keeping the exact same system we have while just subsidizing some people’s ability to pay the insurance companies isn’t going to help our country or those individuals at all. It’ll be great for the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies though.

I think more people will be surprised than they imagine. I think most people’s idea of fiscal conservatism as a centrist view does not embrace brutal adhererence to one party’s uncomprising ‘principles’ at the cost of punishing large sectors of our society.

I think what most people miss is the era when one party pushed in one derection and the other pushed in the other, but it was commonly assumed that a compromise would be reached and it would never come down to all-or-nothing positions.

There was a time, when the result of political debates could be relied on to be one of degree, not of complete upheaval That’s the centrist view most people long to return to. They want to revivify the unity feeling of the past, that one could disagree with others passionately but could still accept living in the same country with them/ They long for the reincarnation of the principles of tolerance that applied to different political views, economic and world views. No one felt threatned by the prospect of total exclusion.if the ‘other’ paty was in the majority.

Now many do feel threatened by extreme, exlusionary political positions that cares only about theories and ideologies and nothing about those fellow citizens who are not like them.

who made the Democratic party the site of the center of gravity of American politics?

Liberals, even though they call themselves and their politically-slanted news sources “moderate” [sic].

Get rid of Bush and Iraq and retake your poll on where the “center-view” of the US population resides relative to the op-ed page of the NYT and post your findings here.

Exactly, CO. And what sheepdog said too.

I think some people will be surprised when the dust settles, to learn that their moderate Democrat positions ultimately are not the centerpoint- that the center has a right side as well but many people who reside there are just as fed up with Bush as everyone else is. That’s a temporary phenomenon, not a true shift in how people view the issues.

The true “national average” of sentiment has been jerked, not so much in my view to a permanent socially and fiscally non-conservative ideology as much as to an “anti-incumbent-powers” mindset.

Get rid of Bush and Iraq and retake your poll on where the “center-view” of the US population resides relative to the op-ed page of the NYT and post your findings here.

Legal by the standards of a bunch of cowards who pushed thru the Patriot Act nonsense, which most now see as going way too far.

Wd a paper be wrong for exposing segregation, even though Jim Crow was legal at the time?

Silly defense, to use legality, which is often unethical.

‘When was the last time a pro-life democrat spoke at a national convention?’

Anti-abortionism is not a centrist viewpoint. When was the last time the Dems allowed an active Klansman a slot at the Convention dais?

The irony is, the same can be said of the Democrats, though with greater force. When was the last time a pro-life democrat spoke at a national convention? why did Lieberman have to run as an independent? to be fair, you have blue dog Democrats, but with the Deans, Pelosis, and Clintons of the world, i fear they are a dying breed.

And naturally, a liberal publication will seem centrist to one who is liberal.

I’m not one of those “us vs them” conservatives, as we seem to always bet stereotyped by “self thinking” liberals. but i have noticed a lot of people call themselves centrists when they are more clearly on the left. i don’t blame them. i used to think i was a centrist, until i payed closer attention to what conservatives are realling saying.

The Republicans who virtually eliminated from their party the moderate Republicans that I used to vote for and can’t be found in my state any longer. The Republican leadership that decided that people like James Dobson could for all practical purposes vet their nominee for President. The Republicans who hold real power in the party who think that there is no such thing as separation of church and state. The dittoheads who believe anything Rush tells them. Grover Norquist and his followers. Put them all together and they are the ones who moved the party so far to the right that the smaller far left fringe of the Democratic party can’t drag the Democrats as far to the left as the Republicans have moved to the right. And the Republicans who minimize all of those groups and their power in the party are quite possibly the most irritating ones of all.

Just suppose there is a continuum in political leanings, hard as that may be to fathom. The statistically defined ‘exact center’ may actually turn out to be a category empty of members. Likewise, a numerical average may not represent any real enttity.
.
Along the ocntinuum, one could conceive of a ‘centrist’ segment going from moderately left to moderately right.

Or, one could just apply the liberal or progressive tag to everyone and everything not in line with
ultra conservatives.
Or, one could choose other criteraia to define limits and labels.

Then, we could argue ad infinitum about what’s wrong with doing it this way or doing it that way.

But there’s an outright admission that the paper leans Democrat, and Paul says this matches his centrist tendencies (which again, if you want to say, center left, that’s your prerogative).

But who made the Democratic party the site of the center of gravity of American politics?

“Moderate is just another way of saying you can’t make up your mind.”

One of the dumbest phrases ever uttered from human mouths (not criticizing you Sam). Family members have hit me with that also. I just say:

“Then don’t ask me to make your steak medium-rare at the family BBQ! Bloody or burnt. That’s it!”

That’ll learn ‘em.