Outside View: Moderation in all things
The following editorial appeared Sunday in the Yakima Herald-Republic.
The Mainstream Republicans of Washington are sounding a message that should be heeded if the GOP wants to again be a major player in statewide politics: The party must move closer to the middle of the political spectrum.
We admire the cut of the mainstreamers because they can on occasion actually be (whisper) moderates in a party too often linked with rigid, conservative ideologues.
The Mainstream Republicans met in Wenatchee recently and had plenty of occasion to ponder the party’s slide from public favor statewide and across the nation.
Last November’s elections resulted in both houses of the state Legislature sliding firmly into Democratic control – 32-17 in the Senate and 62-36 in the House. In Congress, Democrats wrested control of both houses that had been under GOP control since 1994.
While Republicans in Central Washington went against the tide in local legislative and 4th District congressional elections, clearly some changes are in order if the GOP hopes to rebound and reinstate meaningful two-party elections on a broader scale.
Such a change was offered by Mainstream Chairman Sid Morrison, of Zillah, at the Wenatchee gathering: “The winners are in the middle.”
Morrison knows something about winning elections. He was elected to four terms in the state House and two in the state Senate from the 15th legislative district. That was followed by election to six two-year terms as the 4th District’s representative in Congress.
He left Congress to run for governor in 1992, losing to Republican Ken Eikenberry in the Republican primary. It was the only election he ever lost and we editorialized at the time that it happened only after Eikenberry distorted Morrison’s stance on gun control.
That Eikenberry, the ideologue, wound up being the GOP candidate only underscored a very strange year for the party and the folly of trying to win with candidates who don’t even look for, much less find, the political mainstream.
The last-minute Eikenberry blitz cost Morrison the primary by a slim 7,000 votes. Eikenberry was later trounced by Democrat Mike Lowry, a Seattle liberal.
That experience alone is worth revisiting as an object lesson: Linking the party’s fortunes with arch-conservatives might placate the far right, but it doesn’t win elections.
Morrison said at the Wenatchee meeting that the party has drifted too far right on a national scale and is alienating rank-and-file Republicans and keeping the party from finding support among moderate voters. While the war in Iraq is a major problem for the party since it is linked with President Bush, it need not be its defining issue.
We can see the same thing happening on a statewide level, as evidenced in November’s legislative elections. While conservative Republicans may have protected all their safe seats in Central Washington, the delegation was a minority voice in Olympia during the handling of the public’s business.
And about those “safe” GOP seats. Democrats in the past have won seats several times in all three Central Washington legislative districts – the 13th, 14th and 15th districts. To get back to that success, they also need to field moderate, electable candidates – such as former state Rep. Margaret Rayburn, a Grandview Democrat who was elected to five two-year terms in the House before she retired from elective politics.
But on statewide and national levels, Democrats have won the right to smirk now after November’s elections. And if Republicans want to wipe it off their faces, they should heed the advice and examples of mainstreamers such as Morrison.
We like the spirited revival of the Democrats and now look for Republicans to get with the program, too – in moderation. Lively two-party debate is good for the system.