lynnf
09-19-2009, 01:01 PM
http://www.newmajority.com/obama-pockets-another-republican
June 7th, 2009 at 7:06 pm by Geoffrey Kabaservice
“The real divisions today in the Republican Party,” according to Jim Leach, “are not between liberals, moderates and conservatives; they are between pragmatists and ideologues.” Leach – now President Obama’s nominee to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, made that comment in the 1980s when he was a Republican Congressman from Iowa, but it still defines his politics today. Prior to his election defeat in 2006, Leach was one of the most prominent moderate, pragmatic Republicans in the House. He gave the GOP an aura of reasonableness and integrity that helped keep moderates in the party who might otherwise have been put off by the antics of the New Right. The Obama administration’s pick of Leach – like its appointments of other Republican moderates including Jon Huntsman as ambassador to China, Ray LaHood as Transportation secretary, and John McHugh as Army secretary – makes the Democratic Party more attractive to moderates, particularly moderates who once voted Republican. It is one more step in the administration’s long-term project of co-opting the moderate, non-ideological Republican position.
Conservatives will argue that there’s no such thing as a distinct moderate Republican position, and that Leach and his cohorts were really liberal Democrats all along. In this respect they resemble particularly tragic cases of colorblindness, whose sufferers are not only unable to see colors but also any shade of grey.
Leach was long-time chairman of the Ripon Society, the most durable and influential moderate Republican organization. As the head of Ripon, he articulated a position that was different from both conservatism and liberalism, though it included some elements of each. Leach’s major policy statement, his 1981 “Moderate Manifesto,” was different from Democratic liberalism in that it called for radical decentralization, a breakup of the federal bureaucracy and significant cuts in federal employment and spending. But Leach’s program differed from conservative Republicanism in favoring environmentalism, civil rights, and deficit reduction, and opposing corporate subsidy and military bloat.
As a leader of the “gypsy moth” faction in the House – Northeastern and Midwestern moderate Republicans opposed to the Southern “boll weevil” Democrats – Leach also pointed out that the Republican “Southern Strategy” that had been pursued since the 1960s was costing the GOP support outside the Sunbelt. It wasn’t merely that the rest of the country opposed the raw, polarizing conservatism of the region (although that was true). Heavy spending on the Sunbelt’s military bases and public works, along with subsidies to the region’s agricultural and extractive industries, sacrificed the priorities of other parts of the country.
Moderation is a temperament as well as a political stance, and Leach exemplified what many Americans liked to think of as good behavior in politics. As a Foreign Service officer during the early 1970s, he had resigned on principle to protest Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” As a Congressman, he stood for transparency in political funding and decency in campaigning, even when this cost him politically, as it did in his last election when he disavowed the GOP’s negative campaigning against his Democratic opponent. He had long believed that “the biggest block of voters in America are moderate and there is no people in the world more averse to the extremes than the American body politic.”
During the culture wars of the early ‘90s, Leach was one of the moderate Republicans who stood up against attempts to paint the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities as bastions of liberal elitism and taxpayer-subsidized pornography.
Leach could now burnish President Obama’s moderate credentials if the new humanities chairman takes on the political correctness and ideological blinders of leftist academics. Entire fields of intellectual endeavor have been banished from the liberal arts offerings at many universities. Within the discipline of history, for example, an undergraduate may search in vain at most institutions for courses on political, diplomatic, military, intellectual, and educational history, which have been dismissed as uninteresting and irrelevant by the dominant social, ethnic, and cultural historians.
Obama’s nomination of Leach also shows that the President is willing to take heat from his left wing. Many on the left blame the current economic crisis on the former chairman of the House Banking Committee for his role in deregulating derivatives and his co-sponsorship of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which abolished the Glass-Steagal Act’s separation of commercial and investment banking.
It’s interesting that while one hears a lot of talk about RINOs, one rarely hears about DINOs. Politicians of all stripes used to remember the value of co-opting potential opponents and turning them into allies by giving them sufficient reason to go along with a program they don’t completely agree with. Obama’s appointment of Leach and other moderate Republicans shows he still remembers this key political principle.
--------------------------------------------------
lynnf
June 7th, 2009 at 7:06 pm by Geoffrey Kabaservice
“The real divisions today in the Republican Party,” according to Jim Leach, “are not between liberals, moderates and conservatives; they are between pragmatists and ideologues.” Leach – now President Obama’s nominee to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, made that comment in the 1980s when he was a Republican Congressman from Iowa, but it still defines his politics today. Prior to his election defeat in 2006, Leach was one of the most prominent moderate, pragmatic Republicans in the House. He gave the GOP an aura of reasonableness and integrity that helped keep moderates in the party who might otherwise have been put off by the antics of the New Right. The Obama administration’s pick of Leach – like its appointments of other Republican moderates including Jon Huntsman as ambassador to China, Ray LaHood as Transportation secretary, and John McHugh as Army secretary – makes the Democratic Party more attractive to moderates, particularly moderates who once voted Republican. It is one more step in the administration’s long-term project of co-opting the moderate, non-ideological Republican position.
Conservatives will argue that there’s no such thing as a distinct moderate Republican position, and that Leach and his cohorts were really liberal Democrats all along. In this respect they resemble particularly tragic cases of colorblindness, whose sufferers are not only unable to see colors but also any shade of grey.
Leach was long-time chairman of the Ripon Society, the most durable and influential moderate Republican organization. As the head of Ripon, he articulated a position that was different from both conservatism and liberalism, though it included some elements of each. Leach’s major policy statement, his 1981 “Moderate Manifesto,” was different from Democratic liberalism in that it called for radical decentralization, a breakup of the federal bureaucracy and significant cuts in federal employment and spending. But Leach’s program differed from conservative Republicanism in favoring environmentalism, civil rights, and deficit reduction, and opposing corporate subsidy and military bloat.
As a leader of the “gypsy moth” faction in the House – Northeastern and Midwestern moderate Republicans opposed to the Southern “boll weevil” Democrats – Leach also pointed out that the Republican “Southern Strategy” that had been pursued since the 1960s was costing the GOP support outside the Sunbelt. It wasn’t merely that the rest of the country opposed the raw, polarizing conservatism of the region (although that was true). Heavy spending on the Sunbelt’s military bases and public works, along with subsidies to the region’s agricultural and extractive industries, sacrificed the priorities of other parts of the country.
Moderation is a temperament as well as a political stance, and Leach exemplified what many Americans liked to think of as good behavior in politics. As a Foreign Service officer during the early 1970s, he had resigned on principle to protest Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” As a Congressman, he stood for transparency in political funding and decency in campaigning, even when this cost him politically, as it did in his last election when he disavowed the GOP’s negative campaigning against his Democratic opponent. He had long believed that “the biggest block of voters in America are moderate and there is no people in the world more averse to the extremes than the American body politic.”
During the culture wars of the early ‘90s, Leach was one of the moderate Republicans who stood up against attempts to paint the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities as bastions of liberal elitism and taxpayer-subsidized pornography.
Leach could now burnish President Obama’s moderate credentials if the new humanities chairman takes on the political correctness and ideological blinders of leftist academics. Entire fields of intellectual endeavor have been banished from the liberal arts offerings at many universities. Within the discipline of history, for example, an undergraduate may search in vain at most institutions for courses on political, diplomatic, military, intellectual, and educational history, which have been dismissed as uninteresting and irrelevant by the dominant social, ethnic, and cultural historians.
Obama’s nomination of Leach also shows that the President is willing to take heat from his left wing. Many on the left blame the current economic crisis on the former chairman of the House Banking Committee for his role in deregulating derivatives and his co-sponsorship of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which abolished the Glass-Steagal Act’s separation of commercial and investment banking.
It’s interesting that while one hears a lot of talk about RINOs, one rarely hears about DINOs. Politicians of all stripes used to remember the value of co-opting potential opponents and turning them into allies by giving them sufficient reason to go along with a program they don’t completely agree with. Obama’s appointment of Leach and other moderate Republicans shows he still remembers this key political principle.
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lynnf