Guest Voice: What Is A Moderate To Do? (Part I)

This Guest Voice column is by Patrick Edaburn, an attorney who is a registered Republican but concerned over the influence of the hard right on his party and the influence of the hard left on the Democratic party. He is assistant editor of the centrist blog Central Sanity. This is the first of two parts. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers.

What Is A Moderate To Do?

By Patrick Edaburn

As we head into Election 2008 it is time for everyone to start to consider who they will vote for in race for President.

As a moderate I have given this considerable thought and have come to some rather depressing conclusions regarding the options available to those of us in the political center.

I had hoped to finish this post prior to the Iowa caucuses but between work and the holidays things got a little bit away from me, though upon reflection it might have been a good thing as the voters are helping to winnow the field a little bit.

Whenever I am trying to decide who to vote for in a primary, particularly in a Presidential contest, I consider several factors. The most important of course is ideology, which candidate or candidates best match a centrist viewpoint.

Also important is the character of the candidates. Do they seem reasonably honest and trustworthy ? I realize that some people don’t put this as a key factor but if you are basing your vote on what the candidates views are you need to know if they can be trusted to stick with what they say.

A final factor to take into account is viability. While it is most important to look at the views of each candidate, it does little good to back a contender who has no chance of winning. It might feel good for a while but often it can lead to a reasonably good candidate who might be your second choice losing to a really bad one.

In applying this test to the Republican and Democratic contenders I find myself unable to really find a good candidate and the results in Iowa aren’t helping things.

Since I am a registered, if somewhat disenchanted, moderate Republican, I will start my analysis with the GOP field and then move on to the Democrats.

REPUBLICANS

Looking at the current crop of candidates, there are a few who I have to eliminate right off the top as not being realistic contenders.

Duncan Hunter is a nice man and a fellow Californian, but he is not going to win the nomination, and indeed is likely to drop out in the next few days. As to Alan Keyes, not only is he unrealistic as a candidate he is rather radical (some might even say insane) with his political viewpoints.

Ron Paul is an interesting candidate to analyze. He has gained quite a lot of support on the internet and as a result has gained quite a bit of media attention. He may very well be a contender for a third party run for President. But I think even he accepts that he is not going to be a serious contender for the GOP nomination. As I write he is a distant 5th place in Iowa.

Assuming he makes it further in the primaries his positions are far too hard line (interestingly both to the left and the right depending on the topic) for a moderate to support him.

At one point Fred Thompson looked like a real serious contender for the conservative wing of the party and he has managed a third place showing in Iowa. But he had banked his whole campaign on Iowa and is in single digits in New Hampshire. There is only room for one conservative alternative and at this point it looks to be Huckabee.

Thompson is a nice enough guy but he is as conservative as Huckabee and has been just awful on the campaign trail.

So this leaves us with (in alphabetic order): Guliani, Huckabee, McCain and Romney.

Rudy Guliani

Rudy has been a major contender in the Presidential race although in recent weeks his campaign has sagged somewhat (he didn’t participate much in Iowa so we will see where he goes in New Hampshire).

Looking first at his political views, Rudy is actually pretty good from a moderate standpoint. According to the statements on his web site, he is a social moderate, supportive of basic abortion rights and civil unions for gays. At the same time he had a strong record on crime while mayor of NYC and has generally supported a strong national defense.

His positions on fiscal issues are also reasonable, supportive of the basic GOP line on keeping taxes low while recognizing the need to control the debt. On national security he recognizes the problems in Iraq but also opposes a radical departure.

So all things considered his positions on the issues are well within the moderate spectrum. I don’t agree with him on everything but I don’t see any issues where a centrist would find him way out of the mainstream

But Rudy has some serious flaws. His personal life offers some questions for me in terms of his record as a serial divorcer. I don’t care so much about his personal life as such, but looking to the issue of trust, it does become a factor. If you are going to need to trust someone means what they say, how they treat their spouse is a consideration.

In addition, there appear to be some scandals in his record as mayor, as relates to his use of civic funds and his various appointments to public offices.

And there is also the issue of his splitting the party, something that could basically ruin any chance he would have of winning against a united opposition.

So from an ideology standpoint he’s not bad, but there are some real concerns as to whether he can be trusted and also the potential for future scandal harming his viability in a general election.

On a scale of 1 to 10, he rates highly on ideology but less so on viability and integrity, so I’d say overall you could give him a 5-6.

Mike Huckabee

Since he just won the Iowa Caucus, Huckabee has the potential to become the GOP frontrunner. From a moderate point of view this is a very disturbing development.

On the surface he seems like a very nice affable kind of guy. Even those who do not support him politically have said as much. I tend to think he is fairly sincere in what he says and so from a trust standpoint I think we can accept that he means what he says.

Unfortunately, what he says is not very appealing from a moderate standpoint. He is extremely conservative on social issues. His position on abortion for example is about as hard line as you can get, supporting a ban on virtually all abortions with no room for consensus with the pro choice view. He has also opposed any sort of civil unions or support for gay rights and advocates bringing back things like school prayer.

On fiscal issues he supports the same mess that has brought us major debt, large tax cuts with no consideration for impact on the budget. He is very conservative on pretty much all of the issues. In Iraq he supports towing the line, with no policy for withdrawing.

So from an ideological point of view he is not very viable to moderates. In addition, he has a public record that seriously impacts his viability. In 1993 for example he stated that AIDS patients should be put into isolation camps and has recently reaffirmed the viewpoint. These kind of statements are far to easy for campaign attack ads.

While Huckabee does well on honesty, he does poorly on both ideology and viability, rating perhaps a 3-4 at best.

John McCain

At one point McCain looked like a major contender for the nomination but he has run into some problems recently. However you should never eliminate him. From a trust standpoint I would rate him rather highly.

He has had a long record of saying what he thinks without caring how it impacts his success in elections. His background as a decorated veteran also gives points in the trust standpoint.

From an ideology standpoint his record is somewhat mixed. On social issues he is fairly conservative but not stridently so. He supports stem cell research and is open on the issue of civil unions. He has adopted a good record on fiscal issues, opposing major tax cuts and spending increases without considering the impact on the debt.

His record on immigration and crime is also reasonable. One might not agree with every position but he does not seem to ride to either extreme.

The one issue he is too conservative on is Iraq where he has been down the line in support of President Bush, a position I find to be very troubling.

Looking to viability we have a mixed result. Right now he seems to be on the way out of the GOP race but if Romney is forced out then McCain could very well become the new contender for those opposed to Huckabee. Looking to November, he presents a couple of problems. First he could alienate hard line social conservatives and second his strong support of the war in Iraq could hurt with independent voters.

In many ways McCain is well in line for moderate voters in that while he is not perfect he has a reasonably good rating on integrity, ideology and viability. Like Guliani I would give him a 5-6 out of 10.

Mitt Romney

For quite a while Mitt Romney seemed like he was going to sweep through Iowa, but he ended up in second place. We will have to see what happens in New Hampshire, if he loses there this analysis could be moot.

However starting with a look at his trustworthiness he seems to have some serious problems, probably more serious than any other Republican. It’s not simply a matter of him having problems in his personal life, but rather some serious flip flops in his political life. He has gone from pro choice to pro life, from pro civil unions to iffy on them and so on.

The interesting thing here is that if he is being less than honest now, it would actually be a good thing from a moderate voter standpoint. His views as governor of Massachusetts were pretty much down the line for a moderate kind of voter, but he has tacked sharply to the right since then.

This then moves into the issue of viability, which is a problem on a couple of levels. First, he could be a problem with social conservatives who do not trust or like his positions on the issues. Second, he could be charged with flip flopping and that would make for some bad campaign attacks in the fall.

It’s kind of tough for me to rate Romney because I liked his views as governor but am less excited with his views now. I personally suspect that he is being less than honest right now, but that raises the interesting quandary of whether you support a dishonest platform when the dishonesty acts to your favor.

Since I am not sure which way to fall here I will err on the side of caution and assign him a 4-5.

So looking at the GOP field we have several candidates who are not viable, one who is far too conservative, two who are not bad on the issues but have serious trust issues and one who is pretty good on most issues but really bad on one (Iraq).

As a moderate I find it hard to get excited about any of these candidates and a few of them really scare me.