The Big Tent Folds Early

[rndmprsn]

The Big Tent Folds Early

Before the balloons from its victory parties fully deflated, and within days of President Bush's pledge to "heal the nation" and serve as "president of all the people," the long knives of conservative Republicans have been drawn -- against a fellow-Republican.

The demand for a blood-purge of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), scheduled to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was first sounded by conservative columnist Robert Novak yesterday, and is now resounding throughout the precincts of the Right. National Review magazine, whose Washington editor, Kate O'Beirne, penned a magnanimous op-ed in The Washington Post on Sunday describing the GOP as a big-tent party with room for social moderates, has devoted an entire section of its web page to attacks on Specter. His specific transgression was telling a Pennsylvania reporter that he did not intend to support the nomination of judicial "extremists," and especially those who supported overturning Roe v. Wade, which he compared to Brown v. Board of Education as an important item of settled constitutiona l law.

National Review's editors thundered thusly: "The comparison of Roe to Brown was a gratuitous and vicious insult to the bulk of his own party. Pro-lifers are not segregationists, and Specter's side of this debate is not that of human rights. Nor is Roe settled law, the way Brown is." Like Novak and others, National Review is demanding that the Senate Republican Conference suspend the seniority rule and deny Specter the Judiciary chairmanship.

This brouhaha is especially bad news for two men who helped Specter survive a tough primary fight against Rep. Pat Toomey earlier this year. One is Specter's Pennsylvania colleague Sen. Rick Santorum, a darling of social conservatives who reportedly wants to succeed Bill Frist as Republican Senate Leader in 2007, and perhaps even to succeed George W. Bush as president in 2008. Blocking Specter's chairmanship would be acutely embarrassing for Santorum, and suspending the seniority rules might open up a whole Pandora's box at a time when some Senate conservatives think their expanded ranks means they can thumb their noses at party moderates without consequences.

George W. Bush is the second man who cannot be very happy with this development. At a time when he's still plotting strategy for his second term, and trying to claim a broad mandate for his narrow electoral victory, the last thing he needs is a highly public reminder of the most divisive demand of his most militant conservative supporters: overturning the constitutional right to choose.

However it turns out, this brouhaha should pour a boatload of cold water on the idea, so popular during the Republican National Convention, that social moderates like Rudy Guiliani and Arnold Schwarzeneggar are full partners in the contemporary Republican Party. They are welcome in the GOP tent, but only so long as they keep their mouths shut and follow orders about the most fervent goals of the cultural Right.

And it's also interesting that while Democrats, for the most part, have responded to their disappointing defeat with constructive analysis rather than recrimination, it's the winning party that's beginning to tear itself apart.

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The New Dem Daily is published every weekday morning by the Democratic Leadership Council. Complete archives are available on NDOL.org.

[Miss Authoritiva]

1. And so the grand FU begins!

This is crucial to monitor and exploit (subtly and overtly). The pro-lifers already are screaming about Specter and Rove (and thus indirectly Bush). They read those glowing early press reports about the "morals values voters" giving Bush the election and now they're being ignored. Some papers have headlined this as a "spat," but if you follow these groups closely you know their blood is boiling.

A good many working Republicans (moral values voters and otherwise) already feel stung by Powell's visit to Mexico to pave the way for guest worker status for illegal immigrants. To be fair to Bush, he said he was for this before and even during his campaign. Why working Republicans feel surprised is beyond me.

People, he is paying back the corporations big time on this one. This is another big FU to his base. We're not just talking about seasonal workers in the fields and orchards.

Also keep up to date on any typical Bush bait-and-switch schemes for military benefits and medical care, "skills" drafts, backdoor drafts, and the like.

Don't gloat, but do make sure those Republicans in your circle know about all this and ask them what they intend to do. Remember, we didn't expect anything good from Bush, but the people who voted for him did.

[snippy]

2. Democrats should do everything they can to encourage a split in the GOP

between the social moderates and the Reich Wingers.