Moderate pols

see also moderate TAG refers to moderating influences, the elements that keep balance, allow the system to self-correct with timely and accurate information

 not to be confused with moderate, which refers to politicians (tag also?)

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officially dead?

Here's Why Susan Collins' Kavanaugh Vote Was the Republican Party's Final Surrender to Trump

By Heather Digby Parton, Salon

Idolized by both sides, Maine’s “moderate” Republican reveals herself to be just a partisan flunky after all. READ MORE»

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mccain-was-never-moderate-here-are-8-right-wing-republicans-who-were-labeled-rinos

When the news came late last week that Sen. John McCain had discontinued his treatments for brain cancer and was near death, a long list of people in the political world—Democrats as well as Republicans—sent their condolences to the McCain family. But Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren, speaking at a rally for Arizona Senate candidate Kelli Ward, couldn’t be bothered with condolences. Instead, Lahren told the crowd of Ward supporters, “We can’t put up another RINO like McCain and (Sen. Jeff) Flake.” RINO, in the terminology of the far right, is short for “Republican In Name Only”—and as Lahren and others of her authoritarian ilk see it, McCain (who died on Saturday, August 25 at the age of 81) failed the far-right purity test. Ironically, Lahren herself was called a RINO for daring to say that the GOP should be more inclusive of pro-choice Republicans.

A self-described “Goldwater Republican,” McCain was never a liberal. But occasionally, the Arizona senator would cross party lines and vote with Democrats in the Senate—which is why he was considered a “maverick” within right-wing politics. But to the far right, “maverick” is synonymous with RINO (or to use one of the alt-right’s favorite insults, “cuckservative”). The fact that McCain inspired so much contempt from Lahren and AM talk radio host Rush Limbaugh speaks volumes about the far-right’s authoritarian mindset. And he was hardly the only right-wing Republican who was called a RINO for daring to have a mind of his own; many others on the right have been called RINOs as well.

Here are eight right-wing Republicans who were branded as RINOs for failing the far-right purity test.

1. Tom Ridge

After serving two terms as governor of swing state Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge joined President George W. Bush’s administration in early 2003 as director of the Department of Homeland Security. Ridge is conservative, but he has never been fond of the Christian Right and is pro-choice on the abortion issue—which is one of the reasons theocratic social conservatives hate him and consider him a RINO. In 2008, when McCain received the GOP presidential nomination, Ridge was at the top of his list for a potential running mate(Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman was also considered). McCain thought highly of Ridge, but Richard A. Viguerie and other theocrats threatened that if Ridge or any other “pro-abortion vice presidential candidate” was on the ticket, he could forget about the Christian Right’s support—and ultimately, McCain was pressured into choosing the buffoonish Sarah Palin as his running mate.

2. Christine Todd Whitman

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., founder of the Moral Majority, complained bitterly because President George W. Bush included Tom Ridge, Lt. Gen. Colin Powell and two-term New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman in his administration; to Falwell, Bush was much too RINO-friendly—and because Whitman was pro-choice on the abortion issue, she couldn’t live down the RINO label. Whitman felt that the Christian Right had become much too influential in GOP politics and addressed that in her 2005 book “It’s My Party, Too: Taking Back the Republican Party... And Bringing the Country Together Again.” And these days, Whitman is persona non grata in most GOP circles because of her disdain for President Trump, who she denounced as unfit for the presidency in a July 22 commentary for the Los Angeles Times.

3. Ohio Gov. John Kasich

Unlike other Never Trump Republicans from 2015 and 2016 who caved into pressure and have become loyal, subservient Trumpistas, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has remained firm in his assertion that Trump is harmful to the GOP brand. And to Trumpistas and the Tea Party, Kasich’s refusal to support Trump—along with the fact that Ohio accepted Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion—makes him a RINO or “cuckservative.” Columnist Dana Milbank, in a 2015 commentary on Kasich, wrote, “In reality, Kasich’s views are reliably conservative. What’s hurting him, more likely, is his inclusive talk. Kasich preaches to fellow conservatives about doing right by racial minorities, immigrants, gay people, labor unions, the poor and drug addicts.”

4. Sen. Jeff Flake

The notion that Sen. Jeff Flake is a leftist is ludicrous; in 2014, the Arizona senator received a 95% rating from the American Conservative Union compared to, for example, only 6% for Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Regardless, Lahren considers him a RINO for being an outspoken Trump critic. Conservapedia.com (a far-right website with a Wikipedia-like format) has devoted an entire page to Flake’s alleged RINO positions, which included being overly sympathetic to gays, abortion and immigrants.

5. Barry Goldwater

When the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater lost badly to Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election, he was considered an arch-conservative. Goldwater and William F. Buckley were often described as the essence of right-wing conservatism in those days, but when the Christian Right gained so much influence in the GOP under Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Goldwater became highly critical of the Rev. Falwell and similar theocrats—and even Mr. Conservative himself, Barry Goldwater, was labeled a RINO in the 1980s and 1990s.

6. Jeb Bush

The son of President George H.W. Bush (President Ronald Reagan’s vice president for eight years) and former First Lady Barbara Bush and the brother of President George W. Bush, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush comes from a family that has been synonymous with right-wing politics for generations. But the alt-right has repeatedly denounced Jeb Bush as a RINO and a “cuckservative,” insisting that he’s soft on illegal immigration—and the fact that he is a fluent Spanish speaker who is married to a Mexican woman, Columba Bush, is deeply troubling to the alt-right, which sees him as a traitor to his race.

7. Sen. John McCain

Year after year, Rush “OxyContin” Limbaugh painted McCain as someone who was more of an ally to Democrats than Republicans—which was nonsense. The Arizona senator voted with Republicans in the Senate much more than Democrats, but even the occasional vote with Democrats was deeply troubling to Limbaugh and other wingnuts. And that continued during the last few years of McCain’s life. McCain voted with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and voted to confirm Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court—and it’s doubtful that he would have voted against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second High Court nominee. But when McCain voted against the American Health Care Act (one of Republicans’ proposed replacements for the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare) in 2017, the far right saw it as proof that he was a RINO and a “cuckservative” at heart.

8. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty favors overturning Roe v. Wade, opposes same-sex marriage, praises the Family Research Council and favors deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But that isn’t enough for the far-right: this year, Pawlenty lost to Jeff Johnson (a commissioner in Hennepin County, Minnesota) in a GOP gubernatorial primary—which the far-right sees as a victory over a RINO. Reflecting on the defeat, Pawlenty declared, “The Republican Party has shifted. It is the era of Trump, and I’m just not a Trump-like politician.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/us/politics/in-gop-a-campaign-takes-aim-at-tea-party.html

no link

In G.O.P., a Campaign Takes Aim at Tea Party

By ERIC LIPTONNOV. 5, 2013

WASHINGTON — Open warfare is breaking out among rival Republican groups, with one, Main Street Advocacy, set to start an ad campaign on Wednesday that blames conservative groups like the Tea Party for the recent series of political losses in critical elections across the United States.

The ad cites what it calls a “Hall of Shame,” including Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri, who lost his bid for the Senate last year, despite a Tea Party endorsement, after he said a “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy.

It also pokes fun at conservative groups like the Club for Growth and Freedom Works — stamping the word “Defund” over their names — because they recently pushed Congress to shut down the federal government in an effort to block financing for President Obama’s health care program.

“We want our party back,” said former Representative Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio, who is leading Main Street Advocacy. “And we are going to do what it takes to accomplish that.”

The ad was previewed Tuesday during a fund-raiser in New York City hosted by Mr. LaTourette. Main Street Advocacy is trying to raise $8 million to help eight Republican moderates either defend their congressional seats in the 2014 midterm elections or to oust Tea Party-endorsed candidates already in office, like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan.

The 14-year-old Club for Growth has become an increasing force in Republican races. It spent $17 million in the last election cycle to help select extremely conservative candidates — including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — in congressional races that Republicans were likely to win.

The Club for Growth opened the offensive against moderate Republicans earlier this year with a website it calls Primary My Congressman! The site lists 10 House Republicans it calls RINOs (Republican in Name Only) that it wants to see replaced by more conservative party members. Some are the same Republicans, like Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, that Main Street Advocacy is preparing to defend.

Barney Keller, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, said that Mr. LaTourette’s group was wasting its money going after a rival political action committee. Mr. LaTourette, he added, has been working as a lobbyist since he left Congress and so now is trying to help corporate America reassert its control over Congress.

“They can attack the Club all they want, and I hope they spend their money doing so,” Mr. Keller said. “We look forward to adding to the ranks of pro-growth conservatives in Congress next year.” He added that the Club had not endorsed all the candidates featured in the ad.

The challenge for Main Street Advocacy, the group’s organizers said, is to build a network of moderate Republicans who are as motivated and politically active as Tea Party enthusiasts have been since Mr. Obama was elected to his first term.

Party primary results are often difficult for pollsters to predict because the outcomes largely depend on who turns out to vote, and Mr. LaTourette acknowledged that the most conservative candidates had traditionally had much more reliable supporters.

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“We are behind the curve with our more conservative counterparts,” Mr. LaTourette said. “They have built grass-roots networks and databases of conservative voters. That is part of this project.”

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Mr. LaTourette stepped down this year, declaring he was fed up with the confrontational tone of his party and at how partisan Congress had become.

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Main Street Advocacy has not yet formally picked the eight or so Republican candidates it will spend its money on next year. Besides Mr. Kinzinger and a Republican challenger to Mr. Amash, other possibilities include Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho and Representative Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is vying for a Senate seat.

A version of this article appears in print on November 6, 2013, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: In G.O.P., A Campaign Takes Aim At Tea Party.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122017/lamar-smith-congress-climate-change-fossil-fuel-industry-house-science-committee

no link pix grafic

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas—It's midway through fall, and cold has yet to settle over the Eckhardt family orchard. So, Diane Eckhardt waits with rising apprehension.

Cold is the switch that triggers the growing sequence that by summer has limbs sagging with ripe, juicy peaches. The reliable chill season in Texas Hill Country allowed Eckhardt's grandfather, Otto, to start the family business here in the 1930s.

But last year, with temperatures the warmest since 1939, Eckhardt's trees produced just 10 percent of their usual yield. And the year before, warm weather reduced production between 60 and 70 percent. Now, Eckhardt worries not only about the next crop, but about the future of a business she hopes will be passed on to her niece and nephews.

"We know climate change is happening," she said.

But while the Eckhardts face that certainty, their congressman sows uncertainty, casting doubt on the consensus science that greenhouse gases are the dominant cause of rising global temperatures, and opposing government action to curb them.

Sixteen-term Republican Lamar Smith has used his power as chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee for the past five years to do battle on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.Embracing the arguments of a small group of climate contrarians, Smith acknowledges that warming is happening but says more research is needed to determine the amount and causes, and whether it does more good than harm.

Smith's critics say he misrepresents facts, cleverly casts doubt on legitimate studies by claiming they are based on "secret data" and uses his subpoena power to help industry battle state and federal regulators and environmental groups. The result is that a panel with vast jurisdiction over all government non-military science, research and development has become an instrument of attack on mainstream climate science.

"Anyone stating what the climate will be in 500 years or even at the end of the century is not credible," Smith said at a hearing he chaired in March. "In the field of climate science, there is legitimate concern that scientists are biased in favor of reaching predetermined conclusions. This invariably leads to alarmist findings that are wrongly reported as facts."

Things weren't always this way. Under both Democratic and moderate Republican leadership, the science committee since the late 1970s had educated lawmakers and the public about the threats posed by rising temperatures caused by human activity and the need for decisive action.

But in a case study of the power of fossil fuel interests to shape government policy, the industry's money and alliances with conservative think tanks and advocacy groups transformed the committee's membership and supported the rise of Smith, son of an old oil and ranching family in South Texas.

Choke Hold: House Science

Today, "we're in total denial," says the highest-ranking Democrat on the panel, fellow Texan Eddie Bernice Johnson. Instead of looking at the evidence and making policy recommendations on climate—as once happened—the committee is "pretending to be oblivious."

"When you look at the [campaign] contribution list, it becomes very clear" that the forces that oppose regulation are calling the shots, she said.

Smith, 70, has announced he will retire after his term as chairman ends next year. But many believe his legacy will be lasting.The committee under Smith has "contributed to the sort of diminishment of science in public policy," said Andrew Rosenberg, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization that has been one of Smith's targets. "It has reinforced the view that everything must be partisan, and you've got to choose sides. It sends a message that science is partisan, too."

The Science Committee Transformed

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The House Science Committee held Congress' first hearings on climate science in 1976, and it resulted in passage of bipartisan legislation to establish a National Climate Program Office. Five years later, Al Gore, then a congressman and committee member, co-chaired another set of hearings on "Carbon Dioxide and Climate: The Greenhouse Effect."  

With fidelity to its nonpartisan tradition, the committee championed scientists who found themselves under fire during President George W. Bush's administration. The Republican chairman at the time, Sherwood Boehlert of New York, faced off against Bush officials and GOP colleagues on Capitol Hill, armed, he says now, with what he learned about global warming during 24 years on the committee. "I [witnessed] a parade of some of the most distinguished scientists...from around the world testify that climate change is for real, it has serious and negative consequences, and we damn well better do something about it," Boehlert said.

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But by 2013, Republican moderates like Boehlert who accepted climate science were eliminated. Redistricting by both parties—to make red districts redder and blue districts bluer—was partly to blame. But much of the change was due to a systematic effort by conservatives, with significant help from fossil fuel interests that were seeking to stave off policies that might cut into their profits.

The Senate Science Committee's Disappearing Center

Helping the effort was the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the door to unlimited political spending. The decision empowered hugely wealthy donors like the oil billionaire Koch brothers seeking to shape politics in America. Between 2010 and 2012 alone, individuals and companies in the fossil fuel industry spent an unprecedented $90.5 million to elect friendly Republicans, an increase of 66 percent over the previous two election cycles (compared with $15.7 million they gave to Democrats), according to Center for Responsive Politics data.

Sherwood Boehlert

In the end, nearly a third of the Republicans who sat on the committee in 2006—seven of 24, including Boehlert—were defeated or retired over the next six years in the wake of primary challenges from the right.

The conservative advocacy group, the Club for Growth,financed many of the challenges. The group has a broad low-tax, less-government agenda, but its victims saw the hand of fossil fuel interests at work.

"My most enduring heresy was saying that climate change was real," said Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who became convinced of climate reality on a science committee trip to Antarctica. He lost in 2010 to Rep. Trey Gowdy, who was endorsed by the Club for Growth. "It had appeared that I had crossed to the other side and had become unfaithful to the tribe."

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Wayne Gilchrestof Maryland, a science committee Republican defeated in the 2008 primary, believed the conservative activists had a deeper objection than his stand on climate issues. "The foundation upon which their enterprise was built was to select members of Congress that could be told what to do," Gilchrest said. "They wanted a puppet."

The Club for Growth, which spent between $6 million and $22 million each election cycle between 2004 and 2016, did not have to disclose its donors until it established a Super PAC in 2010. But at least$3 million came into the club from the labyrinth Kochnetwork between 2009 and 2015, according to the tax returns of their various nonprofit advocacy groups. And the club's Super PAC disclosures show that its wealthy donors include some heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry and connected to the Koch brothers, like hedge fund manager Paul Singer of Elliott Management, and Quantum Energy, a Houston private equity and venture capital firm specializing in oil and gas.

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry became the biggest contributor to science committee members, according to Center for Responsive Politics data.

House Science Committee: Follow the Money

The oil and gas industry has been Smith's biggest contributor, with $764,000 in donations over the course of his career in Congress. Smith points out that the industry's share is just a small portion of his overall contributions—about 5 percent of the $14 million he has raised since the 1989 election cycle.

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Lamar Smith's Campaign Contributions

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"I'm supported by a wide variety of individuals and industries, including the energy sector, which employs 400,000 Texans statewide," Smith told InsideClimate News.

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After the 2012 election, with GOP moderates on the science committee wiped out, the House Republican leadership chose Smith from among three climate deniers vying for the chairmanship. He had raised four times more money that election cycle than his competitors, F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Dana Rohrabacher of California, and had doled out more than $147,000 to help other Republican candidates.

'Secret Science' Charge Returns

Even before Smith took over the committee, he co-signed a letter in December 2012 calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to release the "secret data" behind proposed air pollution regulations. On the letter with him was Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), a conservative who had unseated Gilchrest and who then chaired the panel's energy subcommittee. "It is likely that the majority of benefits from all federal regulations are grounded in data sets that have never been available to the public," the letter said.

The "secret science" charge was false. At issue was a large, long-term federally funded study published by Harvard researchers in 1993 showing that fine soot pollution, largely from burning fossil fuels, shortened lives. The researchers had obtained personal health information from 22,000 participants on the promise of confidentiality. Fossil fuel interests and advocacy groups they funded rebranded this common health research privacy measure as sinister. In 1997, when the Clinton administration was finalizing the first-ever air quality standards on fine soot, protesters in white lab coats appeared on Capitol Hill holding signs that said, "Harvard, release the data!" The protesters were hired by a group called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded by the Koch brothers and which also received funding from the Exxon Foundation that year.

The oil and gas industry has been Rep. Lamar Smith's biggest campaign contributor. The Texas Republican was first elected to Congress in 1986.

Since that time, hundreds of studies have affirmed that fine soot causes respiratory and cardiovascular disease and death. And a panel jointly funded by the EPA and the auto industry received access to the Harvard study's raw data for a reanalysis in 2001 that validated the original study.

But 16 years after the white lab coat protests, Smith was reviving the "secret science" charge just as the Obama administration was finalizing a plan to tighten the fine soot regulations, a move vehemently opposed by coal-fired power generators and oil refiners.

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Eight months after assuming the chairmanship, Smith slapped the EPA with the first subpoena that the House science committee had issued in 21 years. The subpoena demanded the EPA release data from the Harvard study and a separate American Cancer Society study in sufficient detail "to allow one-to-one mapping of each pollutant and ecological variable to each subject." The EPA worked to obtain the data without personal information, and the agency ultimately released some to Smith, but he was not satisfied. "What is EPA Hiding From the Public?" was the title of a Smith op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in June 2014.

Smith drafted legislation called the Secret Science Reform Act to require that the EPA base its regulatory decisions only on scientific data that is publicly available and reproducible. Science advocacy groups say the restriction would curb all regulation to protect public health because health research routinely relies on confidential patient information. It also would rule out regulations based on studies of natural disasters or human-caused events—like spills of oil or fracking wastewater—since they could not be reproduced. And it might put at risk EPA's 2009 finding that carbon pollution was an endangerment to health—the underpinning of all Obama administration action on climate change. The bill is "based on a misunderstanding of how science works," said Rush Holt, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at a hearing earlier this year.

Smith's legislation, which passed the House twice in the Obama era but died in the Senate, was approved by the House again in March with a new name: the HONEST ACT (the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017).

"Our goal has been to rely on good science, the facts and reliable data in an effort to discover the truth," Smith told InsideClimate News, when asked to sum up the role he has tried to play. "It is my responsibility to ensure that federal agencies rely on science that has integrity and is free from political influence."

Political Operatives Replace Scientists

Smith's first subpoena came only after a contentious debate and party-line vote in the committee. But his powers were greatly expanded in 2015, when the House leadership allowed him unilateral subpoena power. Smith said it was necessary because, under Obama, "federal agencies often stonewalled the committee's constitutional obligations to conduct oversight." He would issue 25 subpoenas over the next two years, against scientists, regulators, environmental groups and even state attorneys general.

Smith also hired seven staffers from the aggressive House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which had provided fodder for Republican attacks on the Obama administration with its probes on Benghazi, IRS treatment of conservative groups, solar manufacturer Solyndra's bankruptcy and other issues. "In 2015, it became increasingly apparent that the Obama administration was advancing a one-sided, unconstitutional agenda," Smith told InsideClimate News. "We needed to bring in staff who had strong backgrounds in conducting oversight of government agencies and getting them to answer questions."

Feeling Climate Impacts in Texas' 21st District

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The science committee majority staff, which had more than a dozen Ph.D. scientists during the Boehlert era, now was loaded with political operatives like Mark Marin, who had been deputy staff director for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Joe Brazauskas, who had been a law clerk for the National Mining Association before serving as a counsel on Issa's House Oversight committee.

Warming 'Pause': Smith Investigates NOAA

In June 2015, Smith and his team targeted research published by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science undercut a key talking point of climate science deniers: It found that there had been no pause in global warming over the past two decades.

In response to Smith's subpoenas and letters, NOAA provided the science committee with its raw data and methodology, and its scientists gave briefings on their research for committee staff. But Smith wanted the researchers' emails.

He said an agency whistleblower had alleged that the paper had been rushed to publication despite the concerns and objections of a number of agency employees. The purported whistleblower, a NOAA scientist named John Bates, later said his complaint had been mischaracterized; he disagreed with how the scientists stored and archived their climate data, but he did not dispute the study's findings or allege data manipulation. "I knew people would misuse this," he told Science magazine's website.

Eddie Bernice Johnson fired back at her committee's chairman in a letter: "The only thing you accused NOAA of doing is engaging in climate science—i.e., doing their jobs."

Smith's NOAA investigation provoked an unusual rebuke from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and six other major scientific groups, who accused him of chilling scientific inquiry.

Since the NOAA paper's publication, several studies as well as a reanalysis of the original NOAA work have affirmed the finding that there has been no hiatus in global warming.

But Smith continued to accuse the scientists of wrongdoing. In a March hearing, Smith reiterated that the committee heard from whistleblowers that NOAA employees "put their 'thumb on the scale' during the analysis of data." And in an April speech at an annual conference of climate deniers sponsored by the Heartland Institute, Smith said both NOAA and EPA during the Obama administration had been "complicit in furthering a one-sided partisan agenda focused on climate change."

MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel believes he gained insight into Smith and his approach after an exchange a couple of years ago. It began with a discussion on a topic on which they agreed—how the U.S. had fallen behind Europe in numerical weather prediction. Emanuel took the opportunity to give Smith a copy of a primer he had written for non-scientists on climate science and risk.

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Lamar Smith on the Science

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A few days later, Emanuel got a call from Smith, who wanted to talk about the book. "He struck me as a very astute man," Emanuel said. "Clearly he had read the book very thoroughly or had been thoroughly briefed on it.

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"He proceeded politely to ask sharp questions. Could this be wrong? Could it be not as bad? A lot of the questions were about uncertainty," Emanuel recalled. At first the scientist felt he was making headway with the congressman, a hope that was quashed the next time he heard Smith publicly dismissing climate science. "In hindsight, I think I was unwittingly a coach, helping him armor himself against reasonable arguments."

"There's nothing stupid about Lamar Smith," said Emanuel. "He's not uniformly anti-science. It's not that he doesn't understand the science. He struck me as a lawyer for the defense, who knows his defendant is guilty, but is bound by law or honor or legal code to defend."

Subpoena Power Unleashed

Smith's tactics to defend fossil fuel energy created legal worries for the EPA, which was battling the industry in court. Officials feared that the constant document requests by Smith would help industry lawyers obtain otherwise confidential material that could be used against the agency in court.

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In one instance, Smith acted with a like-minded Republican committee chairman, Jason Chaffetz of House Oversight, to demand internal documents on one of the Obama administration's most contentious regulations, intended to protect thousands of waterways and marshlands. After Chaffetz obtained memos showing an interagency dispute over the rule, he released them. EPA's foes, including the oil industry, which would not normally have had access to the records, sought to introduce them in a court challenge to the new clean water regulation. "Once documents have been disclosed and widely disseminated, an agency has waived any deliberative process or other privilege that may have applied," argued North Dakota's attorney general, the lead litigant.

In letters to Smith, EPA repeatedly raised its concern about the risk of releasing documents in cases involving the Clean Water Act, the regional haze pollution standards, a decision over a controversial copper mine decision in Alaska, and others.

Rep. Lamar Smith, speaking here with John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama, strongly opposed the Obama administration's efforts to reduce power plant emissions.

foto

Smith's most dramatic rush to the legal defense of the fossil fuel industry was his unprecedented move last year to issue subpoenas to two state attorneys general and several nongovernmental advocacy groups over the states' climate change fraud investigation of Exxon. He accused the attorneys general of colluding with environmentalists, violating Exxon's free speech rights and chilling private sector science funding.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, refused to comply with the subpoena, which he said "oversteps the boundaries of federalism, separation of powers, and the committee's own jurisdiction."

Smith disagreed. "The science committee has jurisdiction over all non-military, non-medical research and development," he said in the email to InsideClimate News. "We had an obligation to the scientific community and the American people to find out whether the attorneys general have intentionally intimidated researchers who disagree with them."

Legal experts see another possible outcome of Smith's inquiry. If he were to obtain and make public internal documents like correspondence among the attorneys general—material that Exxon would have trouble obtaining as a litigant—the company could use it in court.

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"It sure looks like he is acting on behalf of Exxon," said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat who is part of a coalition supporting the investigation by New York and Massachusetts. "It's hard to understand why he thinks that it's an appropriate role for a congressman and Congress to get involved on behalf of an entity like Exxon. It's not like ExxonMobil is incapable of defending itself."

And, indeed, even though Smith did not obtain documents, Exxon cited the mere fact of his inquiry to give weight to its effort last year to derail the probe. Exxon picked up Smith's argument that the attorneys general were appointing "themselves to decide what is valid and what is invalid regarding climate change." For that reason and on multiple constitutional grounds, Exxon lawyers asked a federal judge in Texas to dismiss the investigations.

Although the Texas judge declined to rule, he embraced Exxon and Smith's contention that the New York and Massachusetts investigations were intended to "squelch public discourse by a private company that may not toe the same line as these two attorneys general." The case has been transferred to New York federal court, where a judge has yet to rule.

Back Home in the 21st District

For the most part, Smith hasn't had to address the climate issue back home, even though polls show that a majority of his adult constituents believe human activity is causing global warming and Texas has suffered more severe climate and weather disasters since 1980 than any other state.

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polarization explains rino hunt;

As Trende observed, the Democratic political coalition “has become geographically narrow in the past decade, heavily concentrated among urban liberals and minorities who live in densely populated cities or are placed into minority-majority districts under interpretations of the Voting Rights Act that many minority groups pressed for in the 1980s and 1990s.” This concentration helps win some state-wide races and national electoral votes, but means that Democrats lose a lot of close races for the House. When Democrats do manage to win in the House, they often win by larger margins than Republicans do, which helps account for their national popular vote majority. Gerrymandering is part of the problem faced by the Democrats, but the other part is that, like the Republicans, they too are less inclined to appeal to those outside of their coalition. Democrats may not be as extreme as Republicans, but they are also less interested in compromise and consensus building than they used to be.

When we look at American politics we need to understand that our legislative branches represent places (districts and states) as well as people. The U.S. is a representative democracy yet by design is far from a pure democracy. Our constitution is designed to facilitate continuity and the translation of economic power to political power, but it is also designed to permit change when absolutely needed. In the past, dramatic change has taken place when the stability of the political system was threatened by the absence of change. These changes took place when the political center accepted them: the reforms of the progressive era, the economic policies of the New Deal, the changes brought about by LBJ’s Great Society. Typically, agents of change convince moderates to accept some part of their view. The exception that proved the rule was our Civil War.

In the past, the geographic orientation of our political system has led to moderate politics. In the U.S. system, an extreme party receiving 20 percent of the votes in every congressional district would send no one to Congress. Therefore, the political dynamic pushed candidates to the center where they build the largest coalitions generating pluralities or majorities. The growing presence of moderate independent voters continues that trend in general elections. But the growing importance of low-turnout primary elections has driven candidates further to the extremes. It is hard to believe that Eric Cantor was too moderate for the Republican base—but he was. The Tea Party has less than 20 percent of the national vote, but they have managed to skillfully work the seams of the political and media system to dominate the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. If the Occupy movement had been less politically pure they might have done the same thing on the left.

RINO hunting: tea party takes out lugar, hatch etc. See fank tag, TP

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So which accused RINOs ("Republicans in name only") have fended off, or are currently fending off, the best-financed challengers?

1. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) - $1.4 million

While some are busy "#McConnelling," conservative outside groups have made more serious efforts to embarrass the Senate minority leader. Conservative outside groups have spent a combined $788,101 opposing McConnell and another $586,151 in support of his primary opponent Matt Bevin.

In addition to being one of the two highest-ranking Republicans in Washington, which is its own offense in the eyes of some anti-establishment tea partiers, McConnell's sins against conservatism include opposing the government shutdown aimed at revoking the Affordable Care Act, according to the Senate Conservatives Fund.

2. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) - $1.1 million

Conservative groups have spent $334,808 opposing Cochran and $780,539 in support of his tea party challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel. Cochran's reputation for securing earmarks grates fiscal conservatives. And the senator's recent admission that he doesn't "really know much about" the tea party certainly didn't help matters.

Cochran supporters have fought back. A super PAC with ties to Cochran called Mississippi Conservatives has poured $593,036 into opposition spending against McDaniel. Still, Stu Rothenberg has identified Cochran as the candidate most vulnerable to a tea party upset.

3. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.) - $348,000

Jones' bid for reelection became a lot more competitive after he was hit by a $78,000 ad buy from the Ending Spending Fund, a super PAC backed by hedgefund multi-millionaire John Ricketts and mega-donor casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

In total, the fund has spent $197,230 in its efforts to toss Jones from office.

The Emergency Committee for Israel has also weighed in with a $151,075 ad hitting the congressman for being the only Republican to vote "present" on a 2012 resolution that reasserted the Obama administration would continue to furnish Israel with military supplies amid the American withdrawal from Iraq.

It appears his offenses also include a vote against the Republican budget plan devised by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

4. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) - $272,000

The TeaParty.net Leadership Fund, a PAC, has spent $238,799 opposing Boehner and $33,558 boosting his tea party opponent, J.D. Winteregg. TeaParty.net's organizers were so eager to take down Boehner, they announced their intention to spend $25,000 against him before there was even a challenger. Good luck with that.

5. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) - $244,000

Simpson is staring down the most competitive race since his 1998 election to Congress. Club for Growth Action and FreedomWorks, and other groups that lean far to the right, have spent $206,634 to defeat Simpson and $36,869 in support of challenger Bryan Smith, a corporate lawyer. Club for Growth's PAC has pitched in as well, spending $21,000 for Smith.

Simpson has run afoul of tea party conservatives in part because of his close alliance with Boehner. On the other hand, the National Rifle Association has endorsed him, and its PAC has spent $45,516 on his behalf. 

6. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) - $106,000

The Tea Party Express/Our Country Deserves Better PAC dumped $105,857 into supporting state Sen. Owen Hill's primary campaign before he bowed out last month, allowing Gardner to focus on his general election bid to unseat Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.). Gardner's experience in the House marked him as a GOP insider. The tea party group's spending occurred before Gardner officially announced his candidacy, but when he announced, the group's chairman attacked him as "the establishment's anointed candidate."

A few runners up to this list also deserve mention. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) would almost certainly feature on this list had he not soundly quashed tea party favorite Sen. Steve Stockman in an early primary.

Once considered a winnable race for the anti-establishment right, Milton Wolf's campaign against incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has swerved somewhat off track of late -- something the Senate Conservatives Fund can't be happy about; it has already spent more than $107,000 on behalf of Wolf.

Tea party groups don't just support challengers, of course, since some of candidates they've backed in the past are now in office. Example: Club for Growth has spent $195,000 to undercut Brian Ellis's campaign to upend Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), an especially fiscally conservative libertarian. It seems tea party groups support incumbents too, so long as they're aligned with the far-right.

The rankings will change as primary dates inch ever closer. Our tallies do not include the "issue" ads favored by Americans for Prosperity and other organizations so far this cycle; those are often aimed to influence elections, but do not specifically endorse or attack a candidate and thus needn't be reported until the election is closer.

How the GOP Destroyed its Moderates

• Jonathan Chait
• October 5, 2012

Rule And Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea PartyBy Geoffrey Kabaservice

(Oxford University Press, 482 pp., $29.95)

PatriotsBy David Frum

(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 484 pp., $16.99)

MITT ROMNEY HAS BEEN running for president as the Republican nominee, de facto or de jure, for eight months now, and the grand historical joke of it has not yet worn off. A party that has set itself to frantically, fanatically expunge its moderates, quasi-moderates, suspected moderates, and fellow travelers of moderates chose as its standard bearer the lineal heir, biographically and genealogically, to its moderate tradition. It entrusted its holy crusade to repeal Barack Obama’s hated health-care law to the man who had inspired it and run, four years before, promising to do the same for the rest of America. The man and his historical moment could not be more incongruous. It was as if the Mongol tribes of the thirteenth century, setting out to pillage their way across the Asian steppe, had somehow chosen Mahatma Gandhi as their supreme khan. 

Romney’s capture of the nomination required an incredible confluence of good fortune. Any one of several Republicans—Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan—could have outflanked Romney in both grassroots enthusiasm and establishment support but chose not to run. The one candidate with the standing and financial reach to challenge him who did grasp for the prize, Rick Perry, performed his duties with such comic, stammering ineptitude that his final oops-de-grace by that point was not even startling. What remained to challenge Romney was a gaggle of third-raters lacking the money or the rudimentary organization even to get their name on the ballot everywhere. Still, running even against the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum (which is to say, running essentially unopposed), Romney still trudged laboriously to victory after endless weeks.

But there is another way to make at least some sense of the Romney nomination.

IT HAS TO DO WITH the strange and sad fate of Republican moderation. After all, moderates, or at least relative moderates, do continue to exist in the Republican Party. They merely do not exercise power in any meaningful, open way. They provide off-the-record quotations to reporters, expressing unease over whichever radical turn the party has taken at any given moment. They can be found in Washington and elsewhere rolling their eyes at their colleagues. The odd figure with nothing left to lose—say, a senator who has lost a primary challenge—may even deliver a forceful assault on the party’s uncompromising direction.

For the most part, though, Republican moderation is a kind of secret creed, a freemasonry of the right. It lacks institutions that might legitimize it, or even a language to express itself. And since conservatism is the only acceptable ideology, the party has no open arguments with itself. Thus the “debate” in the Republican Party is entirely between genuine ideological warriors and unwilling conscripts, with intraparty skirmishes generally taking the form of hunts for secret heresies.

In this sense, Romney’s capture of the nomination is perfectly emblematic of the state of the party. Conservative activists spent months resisting Romney, sometimes furiously, despite the fact that he was defending no positions that they disagreed with. Across the entire ideological spectrum—in social, economic, and foreign policy—Romney stood shoulder to shoulder with his party’s reactionary wing. When Romney took on his hapless opponents, he assailed them from the right, as soft on immigration or anti-capitalist. The sole point of hesitation centered on conservatives’ suspicion that Romney did not actually believe what he was saying.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, the conservative movement, far from holding a monopoly on acceptable thought within the GOP, was merely one tribe vying for power within it, and not even the largest one. Geoffrey Kabaservice’s fine book tells the story of the slow extinction of the party’s moderate and liberal wings. The conservative movement, he shows in often gruesome detail, took control of the party in large part due to an imbalance of passion. The rightists had strong and clearly defined principles and a willingness to fight for them, while the moderates lacked both. Meeting by meeting, caucus by caucus, the conservative minority wrested control of the party apparatus. Sometimes this happened through physical force or the threat thereof. (Anybody who recalls the “Brooks Brothers riot” during the 2000 election imbroglio in Florida, when a Republican mob shut down a vote recount in Dade County, will find many of Kabaservice’s scenes familiar.) More often, the conservatives won out by packing meetings, staying until everybody else was exhausted, and other classic methods of organized fanatics. The moderates lacked the ideological self-confidence to wage these fights with equal gusto, and battle by battle they lost ground until finally there was nowhere left to stand within the party.

Republican moderates in the early 1960s held a place of influence and comfort within their party that is hard to imagine today. The worldview of the party’s Rockefeller faction was formed and propagated with the help of organizations such as the Ripon Society, Republican Advance, and the Committee on Economic Development, and publications such as the New York Herald Tribune, Confluence, and Advance. And when the great wave of the Goldwater movement arrived in the early 1960s, with the explicit goal of cleansing the party of moderates and re-making it in the image of monolithic conservatism, the moderates fought back, albeit using more gentlemanly methods than those often employed against them.

Moderates at the GOP convention in 1964 proposed a resolution condemning extremism of all varieties. Goldwater supporters voted it down, their position echoed by the candidate’s famous declaration that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and that “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Many moderates stalked out of the convention, including Michigan Governor George Romney and his teenage son, Mitt. Romney subsequently penned a twelve-page letter to Goldwater explaining why he had not endorsed him. When conservatives defeated moderate California Senator Thomas Kuchel, he lashed out at what he called a“fanatical neo-fascist political cult” in the grips of a “strange mixture of corrosive hatred and sickening fear.”

Following the climactic showdown in 1964, the demise of the moderates is the story of a very long bout with a terminal disease. The moderates enjoyed a brief renaissance in the wake of Goldwater’s crushing defeat by Lyndon Johnson, and they counted disproportionately among the party’s new faces in its successful comeback in the midterm elections of 1966. Richard Nixon helped to heal the party’s internal breach by straddling its wings. But once in office, Kabaservice argues, Nixon eventually settled upon a populist strategy that set him irrevocably against his own party’s moderates, even plotting to deny funding and support to insufficiently conservative members of the party, including Lenore Romney (of whom Nixon bitterly noted in private that “she’s not one of us”).

The moderate Republican tradition had always leaned heavily on elitism, which abhorred demagoguery and the crude appeals to self-interest that they correctly identified with the machine hacks and Southern racists of the Democratic Party. Nixon’s strategy of counting upon white resentment began to identify the party as a less congenial place for thoughtful, educated people. One momentous episode centered around Nixon’s Supreme Court nomination of Harrold Carswell, who was not only a reactionary segregationist but an obvious lightweight. Moderate Republicans refused to support him, one of Nixon’s aides reported, because “they think he’s a boob, a dummy. And what counter is there to that? He is.” Senator Roman Hruska defended Carswell, in a comment that would grow infamous, by asserting that “there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?”

Nixon’s re-branding of the party helped set in motion a long-term political swap, in which Republicans slowly lost support among white voters with a college education while gaining traction among the white working class. The transformation is now so complete that Rick Santorum can proudly announce “we will never have the elite, ‘smart’ people on our side”—“smart” referring not to native intelligence, but to those who aspire to a certain level of intellectual respectability. The party’s ideological and sociological evolutions have run in tandem, driving a progressively wider gulf between the Republicans and the technocracy.

Ronald Reagan supplied to conservative activists proof of the hypothesis that they had eagerly put forward through Goldwater: that a natural conservative majority existed among the public. For the last three decades, Reaganism has dominated the party’s self-conception to the degree that it is not possible within the party to dispute an idea identified with him. Intra-GOP arguments often divide over which side can more rightfully claim to be his heir, but like a religious text the merits of Reaganism itself lie beyond dispute. Alumni of the Ripon Society—the most influential of the moderate Republican organizations of the 1960s—took an informal poll of themselves in 2002 (a year when the GOP’s prestige had reached a recent apogee in the wake of the 9/11 attacks), and they discovered that three-quarters identified themselves by this point as independents or Democrats.

What remains of “moderation” within the party has taken on a definition very distinct from the meaning that it held originally. Unlike the moderate and liberal Republicans of yore, today’s “moderates” generally identify themselves as conservative. They are simply less so. The most recent wave of ideological re-making, undertaken since 2002, has seen a series of primary challenges largely replacing conservatives such as Bob Inglis, Richard Lugar, and Robert Bennett with even more implacably conservative Republicans.

What stands out in these contests is the lack of open ideological conflict. In debates within the party, both sides inevitably grasp for the conservative mantle. The virtues of the anti-government creed (except, of course, for the military and some aspects of social regulation) have no recognized limits. An incumbent challenged from the right can survive on other grounds—familiarity, likeability, the persuasive recantation of any past heresies; but the ideological ground on which he can stand has disappeared. Moderation can be successfully denied, but it cannot be defended.

DESPITE THE MISERY of continuous political defeat, moderate Republicanism—moderate by contemporary standards, at any rate—is not intellectually dead. Quite the opposite, in fact. The movement in recent years has seen a flowering of bright, creative, deeply empirical thinkers, who grapple with liberal arguments rather than retreat into an ideological cocoon, and attempt to re-fashion a program for their party that responds to real-world conditions rather than treat anti-government dogma as an eternal and axiomatic truth. 

This collection of figures might seem like the promising core of a real reform movement, with the policy chops and prestige to slow down, if not reverse, the party’s deepening radicalism. Alas, any evidence of their influence at work is hard to detect. And a closer examination reveals why this is so.

In the waning years of the Bush administration, as the Republicans lost control of the Congress in 2006 and squandered its foreign policy credibility in Iraq, conservatives swiftly turned against the president they had once treated with something close to worship. The vast majority of them settled upon the same indictment that they had leveled against Bush’s father: he had failed because he had abandoned the anti-government faith. What had been tiny caveats in the right’s fulsome embrace of Bush in 2004—his passage of a prescription-drug benefit and education reform, his self-identification as a “compassionate conservative”—blossomed into evidence of a wholesale betrayal.

But the small handful of moderates developed a very different critique. They noticed that a wide chasm had opened up between the party’s increasingly working-class voting coalition and its policy agenda centered around regressive income tax cuts. The Republican economic agenda under Bush had not delivered income gains to its constituents, and it had ignored festering social problems like health care. Both political necessity and the weight of the evidence, they argued, required that the party alter its course.

As the Bush administration came to a close, and the party set out to decide its way forward, the moderates may have been hopelessly outnumbered and outshouted by the Rush Limbaughs and Wall Street Journal editorial pages and other voices of right-wing purity, but they had a relatively coherent analysis and at least a small place at the party table. In the wake of two consecutive election wipeouts, the last developing amidst the humiliating and almost surreal anti-intellectualism of Sarah Palin, it seemed possible to imagine, as the Obama administration dawned, that Republican elites might at least consider the proposition offered by their moderates.

But instead of halting or reversing its long march to the right, the GOP accelerated it, on every item of the Obama domestic agenda. In 2008, John McCain advocated a cap-and-trade bill to control climate change, but McCain and all his GOP allies abandoned it, and even turned against the whole notion of attempting to limit carbon emissions. (Among the public, the percentage of Republicans saying they believed that there was “solid evidence” that the Earth’s temperature was increasing fell from 59 percent in 2006 to 35 percent in 2009.) The party had previously advocated monetary and fiscal stimulus in response to an economic slowdown, but under Obama it dusted off obscure theories previously associated only with Ron Paul and the party’s fringe. The health-care reform approach developed by Romney in Massachusetts, which Romney himself had advocated as a national model during his 2008 presidential campaign to barely any complaint from within his party, now became a socialist horror.

CONSERVATIVES exerted enormous pressure on their party to follow its new and more radical line, and the pressure quickly grew unbearable not only for Republicans in elected office but for many moderate intellectuals as well. The most high-profile of these figures was David Frum. In some ways he is also the most surprising. 

In 1994,Frumwrote a book called Dead Right, a treatise urging the GOP to return to a more pure form of limited government conservatism. He joined the Bush administration in 2001 as a speechwriter, and two years later left to assume a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and write a fawning memoir of Bush titled The Right Man. Like many conservatives in the waning years of the Bush administration, he turned against the administration that he once supported so fervently. But unlike most of them, Frum did not conclude that Bush had failed because he had abandoned the true faith of the conservative creed. In 2008, he wrote Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, which took a distinctly more pragmatic line than he had advocated before, but still placed him within the bounds of conservative-movement thought, albeit clinging to its left edge.

The GOP’s rightward lurch in response to the Obama administration flung Frum right off. AEI fired Frum in 2010, after he castigated the GOP for launching a holy war against health care reform rather than negotiate with Democrats who were desperate for bipartisan concord. (AEI had very much thrown itself into the holy war cause.) Intellectually, the party had left Frum, as he found himself defending its old positions on health care, climate change, and stimulus and monetary policy against its new ones.

Emotionally, though, Frum had left the party. Patriots, his new self-published novel, expresses in fictional form a sharper criticism of conservatism than his policy tract had done. The story centers on Walter Schotzke, a ne’er-do-well heir who stumbles into a fictionalized version of the Republican Party. Walter takes a job working for a Northeastern moderate “Constitutionalist”—the GOP in this universe—who, working alongside a McCain-like president, attempts to see through the sort of middle-ground agenda that Frum would like. But Schotzke is stymied by a network of cynical movement conservatives spreading their own pseudo-facts, and creating irresistible career incentives for its foot soldiers to comply with the dubious cause.

The first line of the novel (“I didn’t get the job through merit”) subverts the entire Randian worship of Job Creators that has dominated contemporary Republican cant. Frum’s portrait of Washington—and, especially, the precincts of official conservative Washington in which he spent most of his career—is savage. (As a novel, Patriotsis at about the level one might expect from a non-novelist like Frum, but the unremarkable story is mainly a vehicle for Frum’s well-informed Washington anthropology.) The self-interest of the right-wing donor base, the sensationalism of the right-wing media, and the careerism of the movement’s foot soldiers come together in Frum’s interesting narrative to create a Republican world the internal reality of which barely intersects with that of the real world, an apparatus more like the Comintern than a properly functioning party in a mature democracy. The only sense of Republican loyalty one can find in Patriots is loyalty to a party that no longer exists and cannot exist without blowing up and reconstructing the current version.

Frum is not the only conservative who has found himself irreconcilably opposed to the GOP and the conservative movement. Bruce Bartlett, a fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, lost his post for his fierce criticisms of Republican budgeting in the Bush era. Josh Barro left the Manhattan Institute. Frum has approached his dilemma in more patient (and perhaps more immodest) fashion, conceiving of himself as the curator of a kind of Republican Party in exile, one whose opportunity to exert influence will come only after the party suffers a sufficiently dire and prolonged setback. A colleague of his once compared Frum’s project to “monks preserving knowledge during the Dark Ages.” For the time being, his wing of estranged moderates has sutured themselves off from their former allies, persevering in their ability to re-think moderate Republicanism, but depriving themselves of any immediate chance to exert influence within the party.

IF FRUM AND HIS fellow exiles have maintained a coherent analysis but forfeited their chance to affect the Republicans, a larger and more influential coterie of moderate conservatives has done the opposite. Columnists such as David Brooks, Michael Gerson, and Ross Douthat have formulated a serious and often stinging critique of the GOP’s radical direction, and, with varying degrees of seriousness and specificity, laid out an alternative path. What they have failed to do is to face up to the cold reality that the alternative they propose diverges wildly from the actually existing Republican Party. They have instead convinced themselves that their reform crusade has succeeded, or will soon succeed. They consign the massive impediments before them to a small corner of their mental space. They invoke the Republican Party that they hypothesize as though it were real, and the real Republican Party as though it were hypothetical. 

Brooks has spent most of the Obama administration harping relentlessly for a bipartisan agreement to reduce the budget deficit, with higher taxes and lower entitlement spending. For years he pined away for the Republican Party to come around to his view, and it all came to a head last summer, when Obama offered House Republicans a budget deal far more favorable than even the various bipartisan agreements wafting around the Capitol. Suddenly Brooks boiled over in frustration in one July column. “If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not,” he wrote, “they will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right.”

Exactly this result transpired. Democrats had been willing to compromise but Republicans had not. But Brooks proved constitutionally incapable of sustaining his own conclusion. That the Republicans were unfit to govern was something that he could contemplate as a conditional development, but when the moment arrived he could not follow through, and he has since fallen back to wistful hopes for compromise on all sides.

Gerson, like Frum, is a former speechwriter for the Bush administration. Unlike Frum, he has undergone no public re-thinking or disillusionment with the previous administration, of which he remains a staunch defender. He played a seminal role in the development of “compassionate conservatism” as a political slogan and, in a few cases, actual programmatic adjustments. Since the Bush administration, Gerson has settled into the role of keeper of the compassionate conservative flame. His strategy has centered around a resolute insistence, in the face of a total abandonment by the party, that his side is prevailing.

So, for instance, Gerson wrote a typical column earlier this year positing that the GOP was divided between (bad, radical) Rejectionist Conservatism and (moderate, beneficent) Reform Conservatism, the latter epitomized by Paul Ryan. According to Gerson, the latter “would replace Obamacare, for example, rather than simply abolish it,” when in fact the budget plan designed by Ryan would repeal Obamacare, not replace it, and leave no fiscal place for any substitute. Likewise, Gerson wrote that “in exchange for serious Medicare reform, for example, [Reform Conservatism] would certainly accept a higher portion of GDP taken in taxes to ease cuts in discretionary spending.” This would come as news to the staffers on the bipartisan deficit commission who tried to forge just such an agreement, only to have Ryan shoot it down.

DOUTHAT represents the most tragic case. He is at once a deeply religious social conservative (and thus unalterably attached to the Republican Party) and a rigorous analyst of American politics. Unlike Gerson and Brooks, who fill the gap between their moderate dreams and the hard realities of a radical party with gauzy rhetoric, Douthat bracingly engages with criticism. It is an admirable willingness that leaves him exposed to constant repudiation by reality. 

In 2005, he and Reihan Salam wrote an attention-grabbing cover story for The Weekly Standard that presciently identified the exhaustion of Bush’s agenda, still three years before the end of his term, and acutely laid out the possible paths the party could follow. The first was to follow its path of tax cuts and spending, especially on defense; the second was to “return to a purer, more fiscally austere faith, even if it means ceding political power, and wait for the looming entitlement crisis to convince Americans of the wisdom of repealing the New Deal”; and the third was to address the economic dilemmas that had festered under Bush. They urged the third course, which would revolve around expanded support for working-class families and “a serious effort to extend health insurance to all Americans,” of which Douthat and Salam offered Romney’s successful reform in Massachusetts as the most promising model.

But the direction chosen by the GOP is unequivocal: it has rejected their advice, in its broader contours and in its particulars. Rather than deepen their commitment to policies such as tax credits for families with children, Republicans have suddenly turned against their own handiwork, complaining that they created parasites free of the income-tax rolls. Rather than commit themselves to universal health care, perhaps based on Romneycare, the party has recoiled against the goal as socialism and the program as unconstitutional. It has embraced exactly the “purer, more fiscally austere faith” that they warned against.

Douthat has hardly ignored these developments, but he has persisted in reading the gale-force ideological headwinds as a faint crossbreeze. He has admirably implored Republicans not merely to repeal Obamacare but to replace it with a genuine alternative. “If the Republicans win the White House and the Senate and then somehow manage to repeal Obamacare without putting any significant reforms in its place,” he wrote in July, “it will represent not only policy malpractice, but a moral scandal as well.” But there is no “if” about this. When Douthat wrote those words, the Ryan budget that the entire party had embraced had already laid out its governing vision, and it did not include allocated resources to expand coverage. Romney has since stated that the fifty million uninsured Americans do not need access to regular medical care, since their ability to get treatment when they reach the emergency room is sufficient. Douthat can muster outrage against this decision, but only by imagining it as a hypothetical possibility.

In August 2008, Douthat saw potential in “Tim Pawlenty or Eric Cantor, both of whom seem much more in sync with the broad thesis of Grand New Party [the book that grew from his article] than your average Republican pol, even if neither of them are running around screaming about wage subsidies or the weighted-student formula.” He subsequently enthused about the potential for Sarah Palin to take up his crusade: “Sarah Palin looks like a perfect face for the sort of Republican Party I want to support: She’s a pro-life working mom; she’s tough on corruption and government waste without being a doctrinaire Norquistian on taxes; she’s more supportive of gay rights than the current GOP orthodoxy (while stopping short of backing same-sex marriage); she has a more conservationist record than your typical GOP pol, but supports drilling in ANWAR.”

Eventually Douthat concluded that neither Pawlenty nor Palin had really tried to run on the sort of reform ideas that he advocated. Palin “became the caricature” her critics had seen in her all along, and Pawlenty, who ran an orthodox campaign of Bushonomics, “had no one to blame but himself.” (In the most recent sign that he may not be destined to lead a new pro-reform, working-class-friendly conservatism, Pawlenty has now signed up to head the banking lobby.) But as soon as one potential champion disappeared, a new one would replace him. Douthat has developed a qualified but persistent enthusiasm for Paul Ryan. He sees past Ryan’s deep roots in Ayn Rand and supply-side economics, his extensive record of supporting spendthrift tax cuts for the rich and sabotaging bipartisan compromises, and his extreme vagueness about everything save his specific intentions to cut tax rates for the rich and slash spending for the poor and the sick—Douthat sees past all of this to envision, hidden in the massive gaps in Ryan’s proposals, a wonkish compromiser who will lead his party toward the center.

After Ryan delivered a dishonest and vacuous address before the Republican National Convention, Douthat conceded that “that Paul Ryan—the policy entrepreneur, the risk-taking wonk, the man who’s willing to get out ahead of his own party—is not the Paul Ryan who appeared on the convention stage last night.” But he insisted that just as Sarah Palin’s exposure as an anti-intellectual culture warrior did not vindicate critics who identified her as such all along, so Ryan’s fulfillment of the expectations set by his critics was not “proof that they’ve been right about him all along.” Douthat is genuinely puzzled that the Republican politicians he gazes upon so hopefully turn out in the end to be advocates of an indefensible agenda. The mystifying pattern keeps repeating itself.

THE MODERATES, either in exile or in a state of permanent denial, believe that their day will eventually come. Ultimately, they are probably right about this. The GOP cannot keep moving rightward indefinitely. As the economist Herbert Stein put it, any trend that can’t go on forever, won’t. Stein himself was a paradigmatic Republican moderate, one of the sole figures in his party of any standing openly to oppose the GOP’s embrace of supply-side economics and other forms of magical thinking. He died in 1999 an almost totally marginal figure within the party, so his famous maxim may offer limited comfort. 

And eventually is a very long time. By the time the rightward migration of the party has finally halted, the definition of Republican “moderate” will likely have corroded beyond all recognition. Already the extremism of the party has advanced to such a point that its most fervent elements are identified less by their ideology—which is nearly impossible to distinguish any more from that of the mainstream—than by the degree to which their detachment from reality departs from paranoia as a mere figure of speech and approaches actual, clinical paranoia. “Radical” Republicans believe that Obama has created death panels, may have been secretly born overseas, and is plotting a United Nations invasion. The “mainstream” Republicans believe in goldbuggery and a massive plot by climate scientists, and deny the dramatic rise in income inequality in America.

Recently a voter at a forum asked Paul Ryan about“the death panels that we’re going to have.” Ryan framed his answer as a mere semantic disagreement. “That’s not the word I’d choose to use to describe it. It’s actually called. It’s actually called, so in Medicare, what I refer to as this board of fifteen bureaucrats. It’s called the Independent Payment Advisory Board.” When a tape emerged recently of Romney regaling donors with a fever dream that 47 percent of the country had grown irrevocably dependent on government, it later emerged that he had drawn the notion of the moocher half-nation from conversations with Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute. Here, then, was the most moderate candidate in the party’s presidential field, in conjunction with the president of its most prestigious think tank, producing a bizarre worldview of plutocratic hallucination.

It was a horrifying peek into the intellectual state of one of our two major parties, but only a peek. The changes in a party remain largely obscured when it is out of power. Many Americans found themselves shocked by the obstinate, anti-empirical methods of George W. Bush, who seemed in 2000 like a sensible man surrounded by establishmentarians. But in the GOP’s exile since the first Bush administration, the party had determined that its misfortune occurred entirely because its last president (George H.W. Bush) had betrayed the true faith. Through a thousand op-eds and foundation panels and talk radio sermons, the Republicans undertook a vast ritual of purification. But they lacked power to implement their own agenda, and so the full results of the transformation lay mostly hidden from sight until they revealed themselves. This time its radicalization in exile has occurred even more swiftly, the final results awaiting only the party’s chance to exert power once again. How long can the current respite last?

Jonathan Chait is a daily columnist forNew York. This article appeared in the October 25, 2012 issue ofThe New Republicunder the headline “The Revolution Eats its Own.”

Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/108150/the-revolution-eats-its-own

tp remake bk: flank mods: lugar, castle, o'donnell, angle v reid; joe miller v murkowski, olympia snowe  107 

survive mods susan collins Me ben nelson nebr

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mods lahood, duremberger, danforth

(Reuters) - Senator Richard Lugar, a 35-year veteran of the Senate and leading foreign policy voice, was defeated in the Indiana Republican primary by a Tea Party-backed challenger on Tuesday, the first Senate incumbent ousted in the 2012 election year.

Lugar conceded defeat to challenger Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who attacked the soft-spoken Senator for votes in support of Democratic President Barack Obama.

"My public service is not concluded," Lugar told supporters in Indianapolis. "I look forward to what can be achieved in the Senate in the next eight months despite a very difficult national election atmosphere."

The defeat of Lugar gives a boost to the Tea Party movement, which wants to force deep cuts in government spending and reduce the size of the federal government.

The outcome also gives Democrats an unexpected opportunity to win a Republican-held seat in November's elections. Democrats are clinging to a 53-47 advantage in the Senate but have many more incumbents standing for re-election than Republicans.

When Lugar, 80, last ran for re-election in 2006, he was seen as so invincible that Democrats did not field an opponent.

But the soft-spoken senator, who is the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, saw the atmosphere of Congress change dramatically in recent years to gridlock.

After the arrival of the conservative insurgentTea Party movement on the political scene, Lugar's long track record of bipartisanship and foreign policy expertise were out of fashion.

His votes for Obama's Supreme Court appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan riled conservatives, as had the fact that he had not lived in Indiana since 1977.

Mourdock said Lugar had lost touch with Indiana Republicans, who were looking for change. Conservatives labeled Lugar as Obama's favorite Republican. Mourdock will face Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly in the November election.

"They want to see someone who is willing to take a stand to challenge the Obama agenda," Mourdock said earlier on Tuesday while greeting voters at a church in Avon, a suburb of Indianapolis.

Lugar had bemoaned the amount of money being spent on the race by outsiders, most of it on Mourdock.

Super PACs, the unregulated vehicle for a surge in campaign financing this year, poured about $4.6 million into the Indiana Senate primary, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

More than $3 million of that total went for ads supporting Mourdock or attacking Lugar, paid for by conservative groups such as Club for Growth, the National Rifle Association and Koch Industries-backed FreedomWorks For America.

While Lugar was backed by popular Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Senate colleague John McCain, many conservatives backed Mourdock.

...

Kabaservice’s “Rule and Ruin” is the better and more useful of the two books, because it is a thorough history of the evolution of the GOP from the Eisenhower years to the early 21st century, but “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism” contains a great deal of valuable information about who the tea partyers are and what they believe.

Moderate Republicans may not be extinct, but they clearly are endangered. It wasn’t so long ago that they were a crucial part of the political landscape. As Kabaservice says, “Moderate Republicans helped shape many of what are typically thought of as Democratic achievements, from certain Progressive and New Deal reforms to the architecture of the post-World War II global order and civil rights legislation.” Lyndon Johnson may get the credit for the great civil rights laws of the 1960s, but none of these would have passed without the support of such Republicans as Sens. Everett Dirksen and Clifford Case and Rep. William McCulloch, whose votes exceeded those of the Southern Democrats who united against the bills. Kabaservice is right to say: “If American politics can be compared to an ecosystem, then the disappearance of the moderate Republicans represents a catastrophic loss of species diversity.”

It is no small irony that, as Kabaservice points out, Republican support for the civil rights bills backfired, because their enactment enraged the white South and opened the way for the “Southern strategy” formulated by Kevin Phillips in “The Emerging Republican Majority” (1969) and pursued with surpassing cynicism by John Mitchell as he presided over the Republican midterm campaign of 1970 and the presidential campaign of 1972.

...

gateway founder supports mods 

Waitt isn't the only billionaire who has recently returned to political giving. Leo Linbeck III, a Texas real estate magnate with a thin record of donations, gave nearly a million dollars to launch the Campaign for Primary Accountability, dedicated to make life miserable for longtime incumbents. Louisiana oil billionaire William Doré, content to sit on the political sidelines for years, gave $1.5 million to a super-PAC supporting former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's presidential campaign. TD Ameritrade's Joe Ricketts, who six years ago didn't even donate to his son's US Senate campaign, has signaled his intention to spend $10 million trying to take down Obama this summer and fall. Super-PACs are the hot new accessory for the über-rich....http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/ted-waitt-icpurple-super-pac

===

Today's GOP: Worst Political Party Since the Civil War

By Martin Longman, AlterNet

Posted on May 21, 2012, Printed on May 26, 2012

http://www.alternet.org/story/155499/today%27s_gop%3A_worst_political_party_since_the_civil_war

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornsteinrecently wrote a column for the Washington Post with a provocative headline: “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.” Their thesis was that they had never, in 40 years of observing Congress, seen the institution behave in such a dysfunctional manner. They wrote that while they had long found reasons to be critical of both Democrats and Republicans, things have changed and our current crisis is solely the fault of a Republican Party that "has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."...

But the nightmare wasn't over. In many ways, it was only starting. Yet to come were the Birthers and the Tea Party and the Tenthers and climate deniers. The party would begin a new Great Purge, sending Arlen Specter scurrying to the Democrats and defeating long-serving politicians like Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (who survived on a write-in campaign), Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware, and a couple dozen "Establishment" picks. Those that have survived are now cowering in fear, completely unwilling to compromise with the Democrats or the president on anything, lest they become the next victim. They can't address climate change because, despite the fact that John McCain and Sarah Palin campaigned on a cap-and-trade carbon plan, the party's officeholders are now afraid to admit that climate change is even occurring.

krugman

JH: Let me turn you to another topic. We’ve seen stagnant middle-class wage growth for basically a generation. There are all sorts of theories popular in conservative think tanks about why this is either a myth or a really good thing. You wrote a piece recently about how income inequality is driving what one might call “political inequality” -- one follows the other. Can you unpack that idea for us?

PK: First it starts with an observation. Inequality has had its ups and downs. We were a very unequal society before the Great Depression. We became a much more equal society during the 1930s and especially during the 1940s. We stayed middle-class for a while, then became unequal again. Political polarization, which you can actually measure using various statistical things on congressional voting, also has had its ups and downs. They track each other perfectly. Political polarization and income inequality march hand in hand. There’s every reason to believe that relationship is not an accident.

What happens is when the wealthy are very wealthy they can in effect buy political support. The way that’s worked in practice in the United States is that the Republican party moves with the interests of the super elite. Not the 1 percent, but the .01 percent. So the extraordinary explosion in incomes of the .01 percent relative to everybody else has pulled the Republican party far to the right to the point where there is no center. The center did not hold, it dissolved and turned into a chasm. That’s not because Democrats moved to the left, because they didn’t; they moved right. It’s because the Republicans moved off into the Gamma quadrant. That is at the root of our political paralysis right now.

Long-time Senator Richard Lugar lost to Tea Party darling Richard Mourdock in Tuesday’s Indiana Republican primary contest. In a legislative body like the Senate where compromise and bipartisanship have long been necessary, this is another blow for getting things done.

In recent years, the upper chamber has lost - due to primary challenges, general election losses or resignations attributed to frustration with polarization - a number of moderates, including Olympia Snowe, Evan Bayh and John Warner. These Senators were often willing to buck their party leaders and cross the aisle on issues like climate change and energy security, forging the coalitions necessary to pass legislation.

Although not a central reason for why Lugar lost, Mourdock had criticized Lugar’s associations with groups like the Alliance to Save Energy and the Brookings Institution’s Energy Security Initiative. That’s because these groups had the nerve to endorse comprehensive energy legislation that would have dramatically improved the efficiency of our nation’s buildings and appliances while reducing costs. They also supported policies to reduce our dependence on foreign oil which increases our national security and protects our troops. All issues which should not be polarized by partisanship.

In his lengthy concession statement, Lugar focused on the costs of partisan politics and the need for elected officials to study the issues and sometimes take a different view than their party. He said,

“Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times.”

Protecting public health and our environmental safeguards not only confronts Congress on a daily basis, it is also moving front and center in the 2012 elections. At the same time, new science suggests that the consequences of inaction on climate change could be more severe than we had previously imagined and today renowned climate scientist James Hansen wrote a scathing editorial in the New York Times calling for serious action to be taken.

Lugar is correct to point out that the inability to work across party lines threatens our ability to address this and other challenges. That’s why the NRDC Action Fund is a nonpartisan organization working to rebuild the environmental majority regardless of party affiliation. We want to remind candidates that you can run on clean energy and protecting public health and the environment, because it’s what Americans really want from their leaders.

Mother Nature is not registered with a political party. She’s just looking for all the help she can get.

blue dog demo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition

The Blue Dog Coalition suffered serious losses in the 2010 midterm elections, losing over half of its seats to Republican challengers. Its members, who comprised roughly one quarter of the Democratic Party's caucus in the 111th Congress, accounted for half of the party's midterm election losses.^[14] Including retirements, Blue Dog numbers in the House were reduced from 54 members in 2008 to 26 members in 2010, and two of the Coalition's four leaders (Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Baron Hill) failed to secure re-election.^[15][16]

===

http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/retired-republicans-quietly-try-to-shift-gop-climate-change-focus-20110930?print=true

ENERGY

Retired Republicans Quietly Try to Shift GOP Climate-Change Focus

by Coral Davenport

Updated: October 7, 2011 | 1:25 p.m.

September 30, 2011 | 6:29 p.m.

Richard A. Bloom

Douglas Holtz-Eakin in 2008, when he served as economic advisor for then-GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that retired Sen. John Warner lobbies for the firm Hogan Lovells. Warner is no longer a registered lobbyist.

To hear GOP presidential front-runner Rick Perry and some tea party-backed lawmakers tell it, the Republican position on global warming is that it’s a problem that doesn’t even exist.

That wasn’t always the case. And if prominent Republican elder statesmen have their way, it won’t continue to be.

Between 2005 and 2010, prominent moderate Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John Warner of Virginia (now retired) were among Washington’s leading voices in the call to fight climate change, and authored cap-and-trade bills aimed at addressing the problem.

And they did so as leaders of their party: while running for president, chairing Senate committees, and working within the congressional leadership.

Now, moderate Republicans like McCain and Graham have quieted their voices on the issue, in part because acknowledging climate change puts them out of sync with the tea party base that has so energized their party, and because climate-change legislation stands no chance of passing Congress in the current political environment.

But quietly, many acknowledge a deepening GOP schism over the issue, as many moderates grow increasingly disturbed by their party’s denial of proven science. A number of influential Republicans who have left the battlefield of electoral politics are now taking action in an effort to change the GOP’s stance.

Conservative economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior advisor on McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign who now heads the center-right think tank American Action Forum, is working with the New Hampshire-based climate policy advocacy group Clean Air-Cool Planet. The group has flown Holtz-Eakin to the state several times over the last few months to hold small living-room meetings to talk to voters about the economic concerns raised by climate change--and the economic benefits of addressing the problem.

Holtz-Eakin said he’s not trying to evangelize about climate science, but is presenting the case for policies that could address the problem in a way that benefits the economy. One proposal that has long been embraced by conservative economists, for example, is a tax swap--imposing a tax on carbon emissions, while eliminating the payroll tax.

Environmentalists believe that the underlying message of such talks could resonate powerfully in New Hampshire, a key presidential primary state.

“Our objective is to make sure that when candidates come to New Hampshire it’s not adequate to come dismiss the science and write this off,” said Brooks Yeager, executive vice president of policy for Clean Air-Cool Planet, referring specifically to Texas Gov. Perry’s public rejections of climate science.

“We have watched with foreboding as powerful forces in the Republican Party want to close down this debate and reject the idea that this is a problem that needs to be solved,” Yeager said. “Our interest in working with someone like Douglas, who has enormous credibility in conservative ranks and economists and agrees with our fundamental position that this is a problem that needs to be solved, is that he is exceptionally well positioned to reopen this debate.”

Respected elder statesmen of the GOP also are using their clout to send a message on climate. John Warner, the former Virginia senator, is a senior adviser to the Pew Project on National Security, Energy, and Climate Change, which focuses on the need to develop alternative energy to combat climate change and lessen dependence on foreign oil.

Warner, who in 2007 cosponsored a sweeping climate-change bill with then-Democrat and now independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, recalled proudly that his cap-and-trade bill got further in the Senate than any climate legislation before or since.

“Factually, that is the only comprehensive clean-energy bill that got to the Senate floor, and nothing’s happened since,” Warner said.

Warner, a former Navy secretary, now travels the country for the Pew project, making speeches and appearances at military bases, and calling attention to the national-security concerns of climate change and fossil-fuel dependence.

Working with Warner on the Pew climate-change project is George Shultz, President Reagan’s secretary of State, who helped advise George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and who remains an influential Republican voice. Last year, Shultz, who now serves as a distinguished fellow at Stanford University, cochaired the “No on Prop. 23” campaign in California, which successfully defended California’s pioneering climate-change cap-and-trade law against an oil-industry-led effort to overturn it.

“My own opinion is that this problem is very real,” Shultz told National Journal. “I recognize there’s a lot of people pooh-poohing it. Whether they like the science or not, there’s a huge problem coming at us. There’s a huge melt coming in the Arctic regions. There’s melting taking place.” Of Republicans like Perry who deny climate science, he said, “They’re entitled to their opinion, but they’re not entitled to the facts.”

When two major oil companies, Tesoro and Valero, bankrolled last year’s campaign to overturn California’s cap-and-trade law, Shultz said his response was, “We’re not just going to beat these guys, we’re going to beat the hell out of them. We conducted a vigorous campaign. It was a lot of fun.”

A pair of former Republican congressmen also are getting into the act.

Retired New York Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a former chairman of the House Science Committee, now works with the Accord Group and lobbies his former colleagues in an effort to keep them from passing laws that would gut the Environmental Protection Agency.

(PICTURES: Republican Supporters of the Environment)

Former South Carolina GOP Rep. Bob Inglis, who lost his primary race last year in part because of his acknowledgment of the problem of climate change, is now giving speeches and lectures across the country about the need for conservatives to acknowledge the problem of climate change and work on solutions. He warns that the Republican Party will be branded “anti-science” if it doesn’t. He is bringing his message to conservative strongholds such as Federalist clubs and conferences of the Conservative Political Action Conference.

From National Journal:

Bachmann Speaks on Border Agent Controversy

Is Christie's Alpha-Male Style What the GOP Wants?

Emails Show Obama Was Warned About Solyndra

Cook: Christie Must be Ready to Scramble

“There are conservative voices that will hopefully show the way back to conservatism and away from a populist rejection of science,” Inglis told National Journal.

A leading GOP strategist who advises congressional leadership on energy issues was dismissive of the former officeholders’ efforts.

“If you’re Bob Inglis and really believe that, the way that we work these things out is that you run for office,” said Republican strategist Mike McKenna. “These retired guys, they say they think this, that, and the other. But if you really want to change it, you have to be on the inside. If you care about this stuff, you run for office. They have been unable to convince anybody that they’re right. The working party thinks one thing; these retirees think another. If you want to make a difference, get off the porch and work with the rest of us.”

But Paul Bledsoe, a senior advisor with the Bipartisan Policy Center, an influential think tank that works with many prominent retired former lawmakers and advises Congress on everything from energy to healthcare, disagreed, pointing out that Shultz’s involvement in the California climate campaign helped lead to its victory.

“They have a significant impact. They are voices of experience and thought leaders, which is a uniquely powerful combination. There is schism in the GOP on this issue. The recent concern over the Republican Party being labeled ‘anti-science’ has brought it to a head,” Bledsoe said. “Wise figures within the party realize that this has come about partly because of their inability to develop an effective policy approach to the issue. That is what the graybeards of a party do. They recognize a structural and philosophical problem in their party and try to work it through.”

Copyright 2012 by National Journal Group Inc. • The Watergate 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW Washington, DC 20037

phone 202-739-8400 • fax 202-833-8069 • NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is a patient politician. At age 38, he walked a thousand miles around the state of Tennessee to win support, door to door, for his successful campaign to become the state's governor. Now, at 71, Alexander is facing another grueling slog: building political consensus around issues like energy and climate change at a time of seemingly intractable congressional gridlock.

The senator recently announced plans to forfeit his role as Republican Conference chair, the No. 3 leadership position in the Senate, so he'll be free to reach across the aisle and work toward bipartisan solutions. "[S]ome of us have to be willing to try to get results that include coalitions," he said. That's a rare sentiment at a time when the Tea Party is pushing Republican politics toward right-wing intransigence.

Alexander has bucked the party line on issues like climate change (he believes it's human-caused), cleantech R&D (he wants to plow big money into electric cars and solar), mountaintop-removal coal mining (he opposes it), and a carbon tax (he's at least willing to consider it, even if he's not yet endorsing it). Still, this self-described "very Republican Republican" is right in line with the GOP in his love for nuclear power and offshore drilling. He sets himself apart from both parties with his deep-seated aversion to wind power.

I spoke with the renegade senator by phone last week about his vision for America's energy future and the role he wants to play in shaping it.

Moderates

See also: Republican In Name Only and Compassionate conservative

Moderates within the GOP tend to be, to varying degrees, fiscally conservative and socially liberal, though there are others who are socially conservative and fiscally centrist. While they often share the economic views of other Republicans - e.g., balanced budgets, lower taxes, free trade, deregulation, welfare reform - moderate Republicans differ in that they may be for some gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, environmental regulation, federal funding of education, fewer restrictions on legal immigration, and for some, more relaxed enforcement on illegal immigration, abolition of the death penalty, civil rights laws, legalization of drugs, stem cell research, anti-war policies, or any of the above. Deficit spending is a highly contentious issue, within this faction as well as outside of it. Some moderate Republicans criticize what they see as the Bush administration's military extravagance in foreign policy, or criticize its tax cuts. Others may support deficit spending, but feel it ought to be more directed towards social projects. Still other moderate Republicans are more centrist in their fiscal policies, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller. Concerning foreign policy, moderates may be less interventionist than neoconservatives, or place greater value on multilateral institutions. Moderate Republicans have seen their influence in the Republican party diminish significantly since the 1990s. Once commonplace throughout the country, today moderate Republicans tend to be found in elected office primarily in the Northeast and the West.

Examples of moderate Republican Governors include George Pataki, William Weld, Paul Celluci, Jodi Rell, Jon Huntsman Jr., Jim Douglas, and Donald Carcieri. Current U.S. senators include Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, John Hoeven of North Dakota, and Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

Moderate Republican organizations: The Ripon Society, which was founded in 1962 as a group of liberal Republicans, today it provides forums for centrist Republican and their ideals. The Republican Main Street Partnership is a network supporting moderate Republicans for office, while the Republican Leadership Council is similar in direction. Former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman founded the Republican Leadership Council PAC in order to promote moderate Republicans for office. The Republican Majority for Choice is a PAC of and for pro-choice Republicans, and is often allied with the moderate branch of the party. Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Presidential nominee Bob Dole has supported the "Main Street" Republicans. John McCain has been considered a moderate Republican for much of his Congressional career; however, he moved considerably to the right on many issues during his unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.

The Republican Main Street Partnership (RMSP) is a group of moderate and centrist members of the Republican Party.

History and Mission

The partnership was founded in 1998 to promote, "thoughtful leadership in the Republican Party, and to partner with individuals, organizations and institutions that share centrist values." Following the 1994 congressional elections which vaulted many conservatives into power, a discussion between Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Ct.), Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) eventually led to the formation of the group aimed at pursuing a moderate agenda and political compromise. Typically, the partnership endorses traditional conservative positions on fiscal and small-government matters, while taking a more centrist or liberal position on social issues. Many of the group's members, for example, support the expansion of stem-cell research and environmental protection.

Membership

The president of the Republican Main Street Partnership is currently Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.).

House Members

• Charles Bass, New Hampshire
• Judy Biggert, Illinois
• Sherwood Boehlert, New York
• Mary Bono, California
• Jeb Bradley, New Hampshire
• Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida
• Ken Calvert, California
• Dave Camp, Michigan
• Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia
• Michael Castle, Delaware
• Thomas Davis, III, Virginia
• Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania
• David Dreier, California
• Vernon Ehlers, Michigan
• Mark Foley, Florida
• Rodney Frelinghuysen, New Jersey
• Jim Gerlach, Pennsylvania
• Wayne Gilchrest, Maryland
• Paul Gillmor, Ohio
• Kay Granger, Texas
• David Hobson, Ohio
• Nancy Johnson, Connecticut
• Timothy Johnson, Illinois
• Sue Kelly, New York
• John R. Kuhl, New York
• Mark Kirk, Illinois
• Jim Kolbe, Arizona
• Ray LaHood, Illinois
• Steven LaTourette, Ohio
• Jim Leach, Iowa
• Jerry Lewis, California
• Frank LoBiondo, New Jersey
• Jim McCrery, Louisiana
• Thomas Petri, Wisconsin
• Todd Platts, Pennsylvania
• Jon Porter, Nevada
• Deborah Pryce, Ohio
• Jim Ramstad, Minnesota
• Ralph Regula, Ohio
• Joe Schwarz, Michigan
• Christopher Shays, Connecticut
• Robert Simmons, Connecticut
• Michael Turner, Ohio
• Fred Upton, Michigan
• Greg Walden, Oregon
• James Walsh, New York
• Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania
• Jerry Weller, Illinois
• Heather Wilson, New Mexico

Senate Members

• Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island
• Norm Coleman, Minnesota
• Susan Collins, Maine
• Johnny Isakson, Georgia
• John McCain, Arizona
• Gordon Smith, Oregon
• Olympia Snowe, Maine
• Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania