After the election, the ritual flagellation of the moderates.

In any election, there are winners and there are losers. There is a time-honored response to both results, that the parties practice with enthusiasm. The winners trumpet the mandate they have received for immediate application of their complete ideology. They are sure that they earned votes through the purity of their ideological position despite the embarrassing compromises they were forced to make with the squishy moderates in the final weeks.

The losers, on the other hand, are certain that they lost because of their own attempts to attract moderates. "If we were only more true to our ideology", they moan," the voters would have flocked to us!" Both respond to the election by despairing of their moderating moves and bashing their centrist supporters. Supposedly, it makes the "base" feel better.

In recent years the Democrats have experienced some disappointing election nights, and have responded by blowing off their large centrist membership, the "reasonable, pro-America Democrats" like a dying star throws off its outer layers. For the star and the party, the remnant collapses into a smaller, white hot core. This week the Republicans managed to disappoint themselves at the polls, and are eager to spin the result into a denunciation of moderation. This starts by redefining "moderate" in terms more amenable to their explanation. Here's one:

"Moderation" has always been political-speak for "having it both ways." The average moderate is either not a moderate at all -- can we really peg Lincoln Chaffee and Arlen Specter as anything but men of the left? -- or a man completely devoid of any first principles. There are many things to respect in a man of conviction: but the conviction that conviction is a wrong only merits dismay. Or he is a man skilled in doublethink -- a Rudolph Giuliani, for example, who believes strongly in the protection and security of all Americans excepting those unborn. Political moderation is therefore usually something dishonest, self-contradictory, or vacuous.

I'd be shocked and insulted except I've heard it all before. It changes nothing, and tells us much more about the mindset of the speaker than the politics of political moderation.

California Conservative introduces a similar opinion in his Open Letter to Dennis Hastert and Congressional Republicans:

In politics, being a “moderate” is just another word for a leader without conviction. I expect more from the GOP.

In fact, what I hear him saying is that he expects less of the GOP. He would prefer the party to be a much simpler and smaller place, conceptually, without much thinking among the individuals. A party with one set of ideas, his.

Someone, somewhere, has created a new definition of a "conservative" and attached that to a definition of a "Republican" and pronounced it gospel. Of course, similar rules have been invented for the terms, "liberal" and "Democrat." Even if one is inclined to accept these definitions, they have a way of moving around. One day you are secure in your Republican values, and then something like the Patriot Act comes along and you are an instant apostate. The same Republicans who disagreed so strenuously with the Miers negotiation now insist that any disagreement is intolerable. Ah well, I have to disagree.

I rarely like the compromises that are forced on the party in power, but I accept the realities of compromise. In this case, I happen to approve. Besides disliking the drilling plan on environmental grounds, I really don't like the way Congress sticks an Energy Policy question into a Budget bill. If the country wants to drill in the ANWR, let's bring the issue up, debate it and vote on it. I feel the same way about nominees to the bench. Bring them up, debate and then vote. All these procedural tricks, filibusters and ways of sliding a non-germane issue into a bill are just ways to thwart the will of the people.

But, the subject of this post is whether moderates have any convictions at all. Well, I imagine that some don't, but I'll assert that there are more spineless yes-men (and yes-women) lounging comfortably in the ideologically pure camps on the "wings", then out there in the cross-fire trying to take political positions based on one's conscience. These writers make a strange assumption, that it is easy being a maverick, taking direct fire from your own party as well as the other guys. That is not how I have observed things. It must be lovely, I imagine, to be a solid rubber-stamp conservative or an exquisitely politically-correct liberals. No original thinking required; "ditto-heads" is how some describe themselves. Just read the talking points.

Alas, I've never been able to conform my mind to the ever-shifting political guidelines. But then, since I don't practice an artificial ideological purity, I don't expect it of others, including politicians. Strangely, I may be a more loyal vote for my party than the idealogical hard core. They don't seem to be very tolerant of a lapse in purity. The Anchoress, somewhat out of character it seems to me, has declared that separating the drilling in Alaska from the budget issues is cause for her to abandon the party! (In fairness, there are, perhaps, other issues that have earned her ire as well) The trouble with pandering to the extremes, besides the fact that you can lose much of the center (and hence the election), is that they can be fickle. A number of strongly conservative bloggers are now seriously questioning whether President Bush is really a conservative at all. The extreme left will do the same, finding ways to make enemies out of one's friends.

Ah well, its really very old news. For years I've heard, from the more conservative leaders of the Republican party in California (a bunch very skilled at losing elections) that they hold a moderate Republican to be much worse than a liberal Democrat. Really? A person (or a party) who cannot distinguish between someone who supports them 48 out of 50 times, and the people who fightthem 48 of 50 times, is going to find it hard to retain office. The Republican party talks "big tent" and there are many in the party who believe in it, but they have a tough time holding it together.

(As I write this, a vote on the Budget Bill, which I strongly support, btw, has been postponed. Even with the removal of the ANWR drilling provision, the leaders are a few votes short. Party discipline is never very strong when budgets are being cut, but after the stellar demonstration of party discipline around the Miers nomination, even less so. When the party cannot get its nominees in front of a committee it controls, and cannot pull out a Governorship race in a red state like Virginia, Republicans in blue states will start looking for cover.)

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