Posted: 02/1/10

Bonnie Erbe', Columnist

Is Scott Brown's Senate election an omen of the possible resurgence of the moderate Northeastern Republican?Legions of disaffected moderates are hoping so.

On Sunday, the incoming senator told ABC's Barbara Walters he's pro-choice, a philosophy driven out of what famed and beloved Republican consultant Lee A****er described as the party's big tent. [See a transcript of the interview here.]

But for now, that big tent is more of a revival tent dominated by the Christian right and conservative activists whose control has served to reduce the party to pup tent size in the Northeast.After the November, 2008 elections, the GOP lost its foothold in the Northeast. New England once served as the party's base. In Franklin Delano Roosevelt's landslide 1944 Democratic win, only Maine and Vermont cast their electoral votes for the GOP. In more recent times, the Northeast elected Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller as governor of New York, Jacob Javits as its senator, John Chafee (Lincoln's father) as senator from Rhode Island, Christopher Shays as a congressman from Connecticut , and John Lindsay from New York City, among others.

Republican Northeastern moderates still held considerable sway within the party structure until the 1990s.I remember covering the 1992 Republican convention that re-nominated George Bush the Elder.Yes, that is where Pat Buchanan delivered his culture wars speech calling Democrats cross-dressers and Vice President Dan Quayle, in a speech in California on the subject of the Los Angeles riots, criticized the fictional Murphy Brown TV character for having a baby out of wedlock.

It was also, as I saw it, the end of the era of Republican moderation.Having attended and reported on every Republican convention since 1976, I was used to seeing large, powerful delegations of pro-choice women in attendance every four years.The GOP convention in 1992 was the last where I saw that group in evidence.

Moderate Republicans have no doubt been marginalized in recent years.Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter read the writing on the wall. He fled the GOP to become a Democrat after years of hounding by the religious right and conservative groups like the Club for Growth, which was once headed by former Rep. Pat Toomey whose GOP primary challenge to Specter prompted his decision to switch parties.

Last year Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, another Northeastern moderate, bemoaned her party's, "rightward shift in the form of a blistering public critique of fellow Republicans. In a 747 word "J'accuse" . . . Snowe blamed the party for ignoring "the iceberg under the surface" and for "failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness in a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered."

As a teenager steeped in New York politics in the 1970s I remember the names Lindsay, Javits and Rockefeller as iconic -- all moderate, pro-choice Republicans they.But that was before the Pat Robertsons, Jerry Falwells, James Dobsons and later the Karl Roves of the world discovered that wedge issues drew conservative Christians and others to the polls like magnets to pieces of metal -- particularly in the South and Midwest.

Two years after the 1992 GOP convention Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution swept in large numbers of socially conservative Republicans.The GOP re-took control of the House for the first time in 40 years. The small bevy of Republican moderates formed a group called the Republican Main Street Partnership to try to bring the party back to the center. Former New Hampshire Republican House member, Charlie Bass, wrote this for the Partnership late last year:

We as a party need to recognize that one-size-does-not-fit-all when it comes to campaigns.It shouldn't be an earth-shattering revelation. But the fact of the matter is that the type of candidate and campaign that can win Alabama is not going to be the same type of candidate or campaign needed to win in New Hampshire. Voters in the Northeast respect political independence and expect their elected officials to focus on finding solutions to the challenges facing the region and out country, not just on red meat rhetoric.

GOP leaders need to understand this as they usher Scott Brown into the Senate. If Brown breaks ranks with them on some issues, they can marginalize him by giving him weak committee assignments or denying him campaign funds in his first run for a full term. They can exclude him for failing to toe the party line on social issues. But they risk quashing a resurgence of support from moderates and independents in New England and the northern mid-Atlantic.

Right now Republicans are benefiting from a steep drop in President Obama's popularity. Pollsters predict losses for Democrats in Congress in November, some as great as 50 seats in the House. But support for the GOP is a mile wide and a millimeter deep. If the economy picks up (as the most recent jobs report indicates it will) those projected gains will diminish.

Senator-elect Brown espouses the moderate GOP version of pro-choice, as did these women. He does not approve of using government money to fund abortions for poor women. But he believes government plays no legitimate role in the decision whether to carry a pregnancy to term. For that sin, conservative activists among the Republicans will likely try to pound him into submission once he takes office, although they certainly rejoiced at his special election victory in January.

Senator-elect Brown espouses the moderate GOP version of pro-choice, as did these women. He does not approve of using government money to fund abortions for poor women. But he believes government plays no legitimate role in the decision whether to carry a pregnancy to term. For that sin, conservative activists among the Republicans will likely try to pound him into submission once he takes office, although they certainly rejoiced at his special election victory in January.

Senate Minority leaders should welcome Brown and his broad-spectrum, self-proclaimed independence.Americans keep telling pollsters they are sick of uber-partisanship and want to work together and fix the country's problems.Accepting Brown, liberal views and all, is a good first step toward making the kind of progress voters demand.

More . . .

"