Moderates for All Seasons
BROOKS, DAVID
Moderates for All Seasons by David Brooks SOMEBODY ALMOST SAID SOMETHING MEAN at the Ripon Society’s annual dinner last week. Anne Hale Johnson, who is a longtime activist with the moderate...
...Which is really the problem with the moderate wing of the Republican party, and the reason why, despite all the failures of the Right, the moderates never really take control of the GOP...
...And above all, he despised corporate pragmatists— while the moderates, for better or worse, are mostly that...
...The TR lookalike turned out to be Billy Pitts, former top aide to Bob Michael and now a lobbyist for Disney, and when I got to chatting with one of the Rough Riders he handed me a card that indicated he was a government affairs assistant with a law firm...
...They don’t articulate distinctive principles that might inspire followers and attract media attention...
...The event was called the Rough Rider Award Dinner, and each honoree was given a very cool cavalry saber to hang on the wall...
...Corporate officials from places like Ameritech actually gave speeches (normally at such affairs, business donors are billed but not heard...
...Rather than being a driving force in Republican politics, the moderates are the pause button in between conservative screw-ups...
...The DLC magazine, the New Democrat, is substantive and crunchy...
...At the Heritage Foundation’s annual dinners there are squads of young true believers, gaggles of donor dowagers, and, alongside the appetizer tables, rows of conservative-leaning writers, academics, and policy activists...
...Ripon dinners certainly look different from conservative gatherings...
...It embraces Teddy Roosevelt in theory, but temperamentally, Republican moderates are everything TR detested...
...Now I’ll never get elected speaker again ever,” Hastert joked, probably knowing that moderates are precisely what the congressional party now longs for in its leaders, so long as they are moderates who call themselves conservatives...
...This year’s Ripon dinner was twice as large as last, a sign of the recent ascendance of the moderate wing of the GOP...
...Similarly, the American Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner teems with economists, journalists, sociologists, and future and past assistant secretaries of state...
...You are such a gift to the women’s movement,” Johnson began...
...The Democratic moderates actually created a grandiose governing philosophy, the Third Way, which fires up people like Al Gore and Tony Blair and crowds out competing liberal visions...
...And a journalist-free zone...
...I’m a moderate and I’m proud of it...
...Senator Jim Jeffords exclaimed, before neatly summarizing the recent history of his party...
...That means the moderates end up thinking tactically—like lobbyists— but rarely strategically— like idea-mavens...
...Meanwhile Morella darted up from her table and headed for the microphone, where she interrupted Johnson mid-introduction and began her acceptance talk...
...It’s hard to know how many in that room of moderate Republicans agreed with the sentiment, but in any case you’re not supposed to say it in public...
...Certainly nothing Christian...
...The honorees included Senator Chuck Hagel, Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Archer, and speaker Dennis Hastert...
...The essence of Ripon is that you’re supposed to be nice...
...He was bellicose...
...And the air during the cocktail hour was filled with lobbyist bonhomie...
...David Brooks is a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Theirs is a movement with plenty of financial capital, and its leaders project a more appealing personality than many conservatives do, but moderate Republicans lack intellectual heft...
...Their weakness makes the success of moderate Democrats look all the more impressive...
...Anne Hale Johnson, who is a longtime activist with the moderate Republican flagship organization, was up there at the podium presenting the annual Rough Rider award to congresswoman Connie Morella...
...He was confrontational...
...While reporters flock to the annual confabs of the picturesque Republican groups, such as the Christian Coalition, I was the only reporter here...
...He ascribed bad motives to anyone who dared disagree with him...
...At the registration desk there was a little sign that read, “Please provide your individual and corporate name...
...You’re not supposed to do anything that might make anyone feel excluded—even those right-wing zealots with the fetus posters...
...We’re pushed back in the background when things are going well for the party...
...A frozen smile hung across the face of ex-representative Susan Molinari...
...One suspects in the end the Ripon Society’s geniality is part of its problem...
...The DLC now occupies the political ground moderate Republicans should have made their own...
...Even the Teddy Roosevelt impersonator turned out to be a lobbyist...
...I want to thank Jim Jeffords for exposing me as a moderate...
...The whole point of the Ripon Society is that it stands for big tent Republicanism...
...The Democratic Leadership Council didn’t just define itself negatively against the excesses of the liberal wing of its party...
...Connie, I pray for you daily...
...Without any word-people around, the money crowd takes center stage...
...After a few minutes, she wandered onto forbidden ground, “I am dedicated to the defeat of that group on the right I term the Irreligious Wrong...
...There is nothing religious about them...
...But the Ripon Society, which is also ostensibly an advocacy organization, is practically a wonk-free zone...
...But when things are going rough it’s, ‘Bring on the moderates.’” And so this year’s affair was packed with congressmen, and clouds and clouds of lobbyists...
...They tend not to come up with big policy proposals, but are more likely to adapt the ideas that come from right or left...
...Strolling around the room there was a guy dressed up as TR ready to storm San Juan Hill, and a bunch of young men in full leather regalia were dressed up as Rough Riders...
...But then, whatever train of thought she may have had slipped off the rails, and she started free associating like some country club Kerouac...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 32
