Tuesday, October 16, 2007
DEPT. OF GOP ANGST
Who's Really a Real Republican?
Mitt Romney created a stir over the weekend with his assertion that he speaks for "the Republican wing of the Republican Party." His comment drew a swift rebuke from Sen. John McCain, who challenged the former Massachusetts governor's conservative credentials. But Romney may have raised a more pertinent question: Just what is the Republican wing of the Republican Party?
Romney did not intend to set off a discussion about the future of the GOP. His goal was more practical: to separate himself from his most worrisome rival, Rudy Giuliani, by claiming he represents the party's mainstream values in a way that the socially liberal former mayor of New York cannot.
Then McCain intruded on the Romney-Giuliani spat, citing Romney's checkered Republican past to question whether he should be trusted to lead the party in 2008. He noted that Romney had contributed money to a Democratic Senate candidate in 1992, had voted for Democrat Paul Tsongas in the 1992 presidential primary, had failed to endorse the Republicans' Contract With America as a Senate candidate in 1994 and had distanced himself from the Reagan years in that same campaign.
"So you'll understand why I'm a little perplexed when Mitt Romney now suggests that he's a better Republican than me, or that he speaks for the Republican wing of the Republican Party," McCain said.
Not to be outdone by Romney, Fred Thompson jumped into the argument last night in a speech to the New York Conservative Party. Alluding to Giuliani, he said Republicans cannot win by trying to be more like the Democrats. "I believe that conservatives beat liberals only when we challenge their outdated positions, not embrace them," he said in prepared remarks. But he also said this is no time for "philosophical flexibility" -- an apparent reference to Romney's shifts on abortion and other issues. "With me, what you see is what you get. I was a proud conservative yesterday, I remain one today, and I will be one tomorrow," he said.
This argument will continue until Republican voters start to bring some clarity to what remains a muddled and unpredictable nomination battle. The question of the party's future, however, will fall squarely on the shoulders of the candidate who emerges victorious: What kind of party will he inherit?
That this is a troubled time for Republicans is evident by the vigorous debate on the right about the future of conservatism. George W. Bush's presidency and the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 have left party leaders and intellectuals to debate the question of what's next for the GOP. As former White House official Pete Wehner and Yuval Levin put it in a recent article in the New York Sun, "Conservatives today are in a funk."
That leaves it to the presidential candidates to define the future, but their efforts to date have been tentative, with most of the contenders making rhetorical attempts to return to Reaganism while dealing with a world that has changed dramatically since Ronald Reagan left office almost 20 years ago.
Romney speaks of the Republican coalition as a three-legged stool of conservatism: economic, security and family values. Giuliani, he argues, represents only the first two and therefore is attempting to lead an unstable coalition that ultimately will lead the GOP to defeat and disillusionment. But as McCain notes, Romney's conservative bona fides are questionable.
Giuliani hopes to appeal to religious and social conservatives by encouraging them to look past differences over abortion and gay rights, a risky strategy that nonetheless has worked better than his doubters anticipated six months ago. His nomination would represent a dramatic reordering of the party that has enjoyed much success the past two decades.
McCain questions whether either Romney or Giuliani fully represents the party of Reagan, but his own maverick style of the past makes him suspect to many in the coalition. Would conservatives really trust McCain were he to become president? It's doubtful.
For now, Republican voters remain sharply divided: In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, when Republicans were asked who best reflects the core values of the party, McCain led with 26 percent, followed by Giuliani at 23 percent, Thompson at 21 percent and Romney with 13 percent.
Romney may have hoped his comments would crystallize his differences with Giuliani. Instead they have intensified a debate about the state of the Republican Party and what it should stand on and stand for in 2008. With few clear answers coming from those who seek to lead the party, it's no wonder conservatives remain worried about the future.
-- Dan Balz
CONSOLATION PRIZE
Union Demurs, but Edwards Gets Locals' Support
Former North Carolina senator John Edwards didn't get the endorsement of the national Service Employees International Union after intensive courting by other Democratic contenders, but 10 of the group's state councils, including the union's leaders in key early voting states Iowa and California, announced yesterday that they would back him.
The SEIU's executive board stopped short of a full-fledged endorsement of Edwards when Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama mustered enough backers, but it said individual state chapters could make their own decisions. Michigan, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Ohio and West Virginia have also gone with Edwards, while Obama yesterday announced support from SEIU in Indiana and Illinois.
While allowing the state endorsements, SEIU also created a complicated set of rules. Because Iowa's state council backed Edwards, for example, the council in Illinois cannot wage an organized campaign for Obama in Iowa.
-- Perry Bacon Jr.
THE WOMAN QUESTION
Romney's 'Unbecoming' Past
Campaigning in Nevada over the weekend, Mitt Romney was asked a question on the minds of many Republican voters: If he were the GOP nominee and found himself running against Hillary Clinton, how would he go about attacking her given the political and social delicacies involved in going up against a woman opponent? In response, according to National Journal, Romney invoked his successful run against Shannon O'Brien in the 2002 gubernatorial race in Massachusetts, saying that he ran against O'Brien "as a person, not a woman," and he added: "I intend to do that again."
In fact, the historical record is a little less clear cut on that score. The final week of the Romney-O'Brien race was consumed partly with a debate over whether Romney had taken a sexist tack in a televised debate with O'Brien, the state treasurer with a reputation as a smart and tough political insider, when he described her criticisms of him as "unbecoming." O'Brien and her supporters decried that as code language intended to undercut a strong woman. In one exchange in the debate, over O'Brien's citation of Romney's endorsement from an antiabortion group in 1994, Romney said, "Your effort to continue to try and create fear and deception here is unbecoming." And deflecting her attack regarding Medicare fraud at a company whose board he served on, Romney said, "You know, the level of misrepresentation is just not becoming, Shannon. That's just wrong."
In the days following the debate, O'Brien charged that Romney "wouldn't use the word 'unbecoming' if he were speaking about a male opponent." Romney denied this vehemently. "Unbecoming, inappropriate, not the right way to be, I'm looking for the kind of word that says, when someone is doing something that is not in the kind of manners I would have expected," he said. "That's a word which I would apply to a man or to a woman."
-- Alec MacGillis
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