Are there really any moderate Republicans in office anymore?

Clive Crook is beginning to doubt it , and to be honest, so am I. John McCain is trying to pretend he never was a “maverick” and as Crook notes, thoughtful leaders like Mitt Romney are running away from their more moderate stances. It seems that there is a spirit running within the GOP that crushes any differences and imposes a soul-killing conformity that screams meaningless phrases like “secular socialist machine.”

As the health care debate seems to heat up, I’ve had a few thoughts about the whole drama from my vantage point as someone on the center-right. This is less of magnum opus than some random thoughts on the issue. I should stress these are the thoughts of one person and don’t reflect all Republicans or all moderate Republicans (all twelve of us).

First, I still don’t understand why many Democrats and liberals are so hung up on a public option. I know that the rhetoric is that it is needed to keep the private insurers honest, but to me it seems needless. I mean if we wanted to make sure the insurance companies are playing fair, we would have laws that would ban certain practices like pre-existing conditions or recission and the like. In short we could use regulation. I know that has become an anathema among your typical Republican, but then, I have never been the typical Republican.

If an organization doesn’t bother to update its website, then it might as well not exist. The only way for a group to thrive is to have an active web presence getting its message out

Moderate Republicanism, Progressive being a component, is an esoteric ideology to many — a philosophy difficult to define. Extremists and militant social Conservatives have succeeded in wrongly labeling Moderates as a recent political mutation. History documents otherwise. Between 1890 and 1950 the Moderate wing dominated the party. Moderate Republicanism traces its roots to men like U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the 1850s.

  By Dennis Sanders   Yesterday’s post was primarily a response to why Ross Douthat’s snarky dismissal of New England or Rockefeller Republicans was off base. Using a column by Ross’ workmate at the New York Times, David Brooks, I offered that moderate Republicans are not opportunists as they are bearers of an old tradition [...]

By Richard Ivory Change came to Northern Virginia yesterday with the electoral victories of two little known candidates. The first was Alicia R. Hughes, a black female candidate running as an Independent and Frank Fannon who ran as a moderate Republican. Both ran as a team seeking to wrestle power from the do-nothing powerful Democrat [...]