Often at odds with Bush, moderates star in New York

NEW YORK – Sen. John Sununu, a conservative Republican from New Hampshire, says he is perplexed that anyone would question why his party would showcase moderates such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in prime time at the party’s convention that started here Monday.

“If everyone agreed with the president, we’d be accused of applying a litmus test and our convention would be called scripted,” he said.

And yet, this is the simmering tension of both the 2004 Republican National Convention and the Republican Party itself. While President Bush is considered a conservative, his convention is featuring moderates who frequently disagree with him on a host of issues and make up a minority inside the party. In Washington, their voices often are ignored.

“Their views are not exactly in great favor among the activists in the party, among the financial contributors and usually the people who wind up winning presidential nominations,” said William Mayer, a political science professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

McCain, for example, has criticized Bush severely for his execution of the Iraq war and his outsized spending. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani signed a law allowing civil unions for gay couples despite the GOP platform’s opposition. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Gov. George Pataki support abortion rights while the president and the bulk of the party oppose abortion.

Nevertheless, these are the stars of Madison Square Garden – renegades and rebels who back the president’s re-election but never hesitate to say when they disagree. The reason for their selection, GOP officials said, is that they bring a star power and an appeal to the independent swing voters who hold the key to November’s election.

“The point of the convention is to speak to Americans who, two months out from the election, don’t know what team they’re on,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a key ally of the Bush administration. “You put on Schwarzenegger and the mayor of New York, because those are people the channel surfers are more likely to stop and listen to.”

To the conservatives privately complaining that they have been shunted aside, Norquist said, “The whining about this is not a grown-up thing.”

And yet, on Capitol Hill and within the executive branch, moderates are frequently disrespected and often ignored. Conservatives like Majority Leader Tom DeLay refer derisively to moderates as “squishes.”

McCain, for example, received little support from his party to revamp the campaign finance system, and Bush only grudgingly signed the legislation into law. Other Republicans who regularly join forces with Democrats to find common legislative ground are viewed with suspicion. Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont was so peeved by his pariah status within the party that he jumped the Republican ship and declared himself an Independent.

Democrats say that the Bush campaign is simply using these moderates to put their harsh policies in a softer light, pretending to be something they’re not.

“The irony is if you look at the Bush record and you look at the Bush platform, there’s no relation to the political philosophy of the people speaking in prime time,” said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for the Democratic Party. “It’s a complete smokescreen.”

Moderate Republicans, on the other hand, are ecstatic.

“I was thrilled to see the prime-time lineup, because the people there strongly reflect practical problem-solvers,” said Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., a member of the Tuesday Group, a gathering of moderate House Republicans who generally favor abortion rights.

Anthony O’Donnell, the conservative state House Minority Whip from Maryland, said the party’s big-tent approach is being unfairly singled out for criticism.

“In the past we’ve been criticized for being too far to the right,” O’Donnell said. “So we took Ronald Reagan’s suggestion for broadening our horizons and we get criticized for that, too. We’re a national party, we’re broad-based and we’re including everybody.”

Paul Weyrich, president of the conservative Free Congress Foundation, said the convention’s prime-time speakers have little ideological conflict with the party because the party has no ideological guide these days.

“It is a Bush party, which is not strongly ideological,” Weyrich said. Indeed, Tom Rath, a Republican national committeeman from New Hampshire, said the convention is about winning the election, not ideological purity.

“The strongest unifying principle of this party right now is the re-election of this president,” Rath said.