John Baer: GOP commences its shift away from wedge issues
POLITICAL PARTIES are the darnedest things.
They take on traits and characteristics. They get cliché labels. And when they're down and out they "reinvent" themselves - though the word these days is "re-brand."
This word actually strikes me as silly since it implies painful, exterior-only change.
But I digress. The point is that reinventions or re-brandings are common tactics performed as election cycles dictate.
There's nothing new under the sun.
Democrats, you'll recall, had to shed a post-9/11 weenie image to prove they were tough enough to govern in a dangerous world. Granted, they had George W. Bush's reign to help them prevent Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority."
Remember when that seemed possible?
Now comes James Carville's new book, "40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation."
I'm betting Carville's dream is as likely to be realized as Rove's.
For it's the GOP's turn to reinvent. Just as Democrats moved toward the mainstream center, de-emphasizing lefty stances on gays, guns and abortion rights, Republicans no doubt will dance towards the middle, de-emphasizing right-wing views on gays, guns and abortion.
Despite Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and the party's conservative core, there's evidence that's just what Republicans are doing.
A new mass-mailed fundraising letter from GOP National Chairman Michael Steele includes a questionnaire. There are 15 questions. Not one deals with the wedge issues that once were the party's red meat diet. Closest thing is the question: "Should English be the official language of the United States?"
This is tame stuff, especially for a GOP fundraising mailer.
Which brings me to Pat Toomey.
The former Lehigh Valley congressman, a conservative running for the GOP Senate nomination to oppose Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter next year, seems to understand the need for some, oh, let's call it "shining that conservative light somewhere else."
In an opinion piece published last week in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Toomey talks of the GOP's "big tent," says "personal freedom" is the nation's highest political goal and insists that Republicans disagreeing with the party's anti-abortion position "certainly" shouldn't be shunned.
This sounds to me like some social softening, so I ask him.
"Yes, I will be focusing on economic issues," Toomey tells me, "That's always been my area of expertise and interest."
He adds, "I've never believed you couldn't be a good Republican if you're pro-choice. I've never believed that."
And while he stresses he's anti-abortion and says social conservatives are "an important part" of the GOP, he would not, for example, advocate keeping Tom Ridge off a national ticket because Ridge supports abortion rights. If Ridge had been nominated, Toomey says, "I would have been an enthusiastic supporter."
He argues that a focus on fiscal conservatism, pocketbook issues, is key to a GOP comeback and to his campaign's success.
"The current administration is way overreaching," he says. "The scale is breathtaking."
He cites "staggering" spending, debt and government controls on things like failing automakers and banks.
"What they're doing in Washington cannot end well," Toomey says.
He adds that "the most fundamental divide in the country" is between heavy regulation by government and "individual freedoms."
That message, applied to everything from bailouts to government-controlled health care, and supported with specific sensible alternatives, is emerging as a GOP path back to relevance.
Not that some of the same old stuff isn't still around: tomorrow, state Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair, holds a rally in Hollidaysburg to announce his amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between "one man and one woman"; and Dick Cheney prefers Limbaugh as a GOP leader rather than Colin Powell.
But Toomey is set to speak today at a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon. And I doubt that his remarks include references to marriage amendments or Rush.
Send e-mail to baerj@phillynews.com.
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