Or will 2010, based on the Republican Senate campaign strategy being pursued by Texas Senator John Cornyn, bring a resurgence of moderate Republican officeholders?
It’s an uphill fight for Cornyn within the GOP, reports Todd J. Gillman of the Dallas Morning News.
Of course, the Democratic Senate campaign of several years ago, under the leadership of New York’s Chuck Schumer, pursued a similar strategy for his party. The result was a heavier representation of more moderate Democrats in the upper chamber of Congress.
[Interestingly, neither Cornyn or Schumer can be classified as moderates. The former is a conservative Republican and the latter is a liberal Democrat.]
Strategies like those pursued first by Schumer for the Democrats and now by Cornyn for the Republicans drive those who believe political parties ought to be ideologically pure–at least by their reckoning of what constitutes ideological purity–absolutely nuts. They argue that gaining committee chairs and having allegedly impervious majorities in Congress mean little if the people elected under their parties’ banners don’t vote the right way.
Others counter that the insistence on ideological purity is one key ingredient in gridlock and Washington’s seemingly congenital inability to change its ways. Parties, they say, need to be “big tents.” Republicans like Cornyn can point to President Reagan, an undeniable conservative who nonetheless consorted with and even appointed “liberal Republicans” to his administration. In 1976, bidding to take the GOP presidential nomination from the incumbent Gerald Ford, Reagan said that liberal Republican Senator Richard Schweiker would be his running mate if he beat Ford. The choice was hailed as a master stroke by many conservatives; it’s hard to know how they might react to a similar move today. Likely it would be seen as a sellout, an indication that once in office, a candidate wouldn’t be pure enough.
Move-on.org-style liberal Democrats are equally scornful of Democrats who display moderation or a desire for their party to be a big tent.
This article from today’s Columbus Dispatch regarding the partisanship of most members of the House Representatives, suggests that moderates, or at least those willing to vote or work with the other party, be they Democrats or Republicans, aren’t going to be resurgent for some time.
[Related, from November 19, 2007: So, What Exactly is a Moderate?]
[This is not being posted on my personal blog, but feel free to come over and check it out anyway.]