Introduction

What's a moderate Republican to do? The Democrats hold the House and the Senate, won back the White House with a candidate that some supporters liken to a figure from the Bible, and have more support in the press than they've had in any recent time period (a truly amazing accomplishment). And at the same time the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, T.R., Eisenhower, and Reagan has become something akin to a national embarrassment. In a time of national hypertension over the economy, the Republican Party has become the party of nostalgia and negativity. If you doubt me, just replay Governor Bobby Jindal's reply to President Obama's speech to Congress. Jindal is a Rhodes Scholar, but he sounded more like a worker on a road crew with his complaints about too much government and wasteful spending. This is old thinking, and if the Republican Party is going to make a comeback before, say, 2020, party leaders have to take one, two, or even three steps back and see that the old time Republican religion does not work in a time when taxpayers are legitimately afraid about their jobs and their savings. Hard line conservatism is no longer viable during this Great Recession, and Republican candidates should take lessons from some of the smart Democratic House and Senate candidates who ran in toss-up districts and states in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and tack toward the center if they are going to have shots at winning in 2010 and 2012.

I have been a Republican since I came to understand the history of the Republican Party. My mother was a staunch Republican, and she told me of the party's leading role in the fight against slavery, the party's belief in invididuals, its suspicion of group politics, and its belief in our nation, without apologies or exceptions. Yet, being a Republican was to possess a hard luck political gene. I say "hard luck" because I grew up in, and still live in, that most left wing and most parochial of cities: New York City. In New York it has long been the case that in politics what matters is whether you have a "D" or and "R" next to your name. If it is a "D" you are a saint. If it is an "R" you are an unrepentant sinner, never to be allowed into the political heaven that is the home to such greats as F.D.R., Al Smith, and, in Manhattan at least, Alger Hiss. The other side of parochial New York politics stems from the phrase, "What can you do for me?" Although the days of Tammany Hall are long gone, the spirit of Tammany still lives in the hearts of many countless New Yorkers, nearly all of them Democrats. And why not? Democratic Party politicians control nearly all but a few offices in the five boroughs, so if a hard working tax payer wants a favor he/she needs to contact the party of F.D.R., not the party of T.R. But until recent years moderate Republican politicians held offices in states throughout the northeast and upper midwest. A few still do. It is for the the supporters of these hardworking, often beleagured office holders that I write this blog.

To be a moderate in the Republican Party in 2009 is to be an outsider. And perhaps that's a good thing, considering who the insiders are. Ironically, President Obama is something of an outsider in his own party. He ran against the Democratic establishment when he ran for the Illinois State Senate in 1996 (and won). He was an outsider when he ran for Congress in 2000 (and lost). He won a hard fought primary for the Democratic Senate nomination in 2004, and was not supported by most party insiders in the early stages of his presidential run. In fact, Obama may the the biggest outsider to get the Democratic nomination since Jimmy Carter. I am not saying that Obama is a closet moderate, or that Republicans should support him on many issues. An opposition party should generally oppose the party in power. But that opposition should be creative, and, especially in troubled times, flexible. We must understand that Obama is popular, and that the Democratic establishment is piggybacking off of him. In either four or eight years there will be a new president. But the permanent Democratic Party, well represented by such men as David Obey, Charlie Rangel, Henry Waxman, and John Dingell (the poster boy for term limits, with fifty-three years of taxing, regulating, and expropriating to his credit) will still be there. If Republicans present moderate, creative, and forward looking ideas, we may make a swift comeback, and put these Democratic drones out to pasture permanently. If we don't, troubled times will face us for a long time to come.

John Attanas