WASHINGTON, July 14 - Gov. George E. Pataki of New York is headed to Iowa this weekend for what associates described on Thursday as an exploration of whether he should run for president in 2008, reflecting what they called an increased likelihood that he would forgo a bid for a fourth term next year and turn to the national stage.
Mr. Pataki's associates said he viewed the trip - as part of a visit by him to a National Governors' Association meeting, taking place in a state that begins the presidential selection process with its winter caucuses - as a test of whether a moderate Republican from New York has a real chance of winning his party's presidential nomination.
If he ran, Mr. Pataki, who supports abortion rights and gun control, would most likely be the most moderate candidate in the Republican field, and would face significant hurdles with a Republican primary electorate that has become increasingly conservative, particularly in states like Iowa.
While I will say that I'm receptive to the idea of a moderate Republican running for President, there is no way Pataki can win the presidency in 2008. There is no such thing as a moderate Republican on the national stage. If you wish to run for president of the Republican Party, you cannot support abortion rights or even gun control--which contradicts both the party platform and the Religious Right agenda, which now controls the platform. The Religious Right will never accept a Pataki as their party candidate.
One of the biggest problems with the Republican Party is that the party has been controlled by right-wing ideologues and the Religious Right evangelists. This control of the party started in the 1980s as Ronald Reagan was president. Reagan was a master showman of contradiction between what he said, and what he did. Reagan could give a speech demanding the overturning of abortion that would send the party faithful in political ecstasy, but then Reagan would do nothing in the White House to overturn abortion. The right-wingers watched as both Reagan and Bush Senior solicited their votes for the elections as moderate Republicans, but would never institute any of their policies into legislation. The right-wingers got angry at the moderates in the party wing, then started to withhold their votes from the Republican Party as moderates such as Bush Senior lost to Bill Clinton in his re-election bid in 1992, and Bob Dole failed to take the presidency from Clinton in 1996.
Enter George Bush Jr. and Karl Rove. Bush Jr. was a born-again Christian who pretty much believed in what the ideologues and evangelists wanted changed in the platform. Rove was the master political strategist. Rove was the political guru who saw the declining numbers of religious right-wingers voting for the Republican ticket. In the 2000 elections, Rove pretty much reversed the election strategy of marketing Bush as a moderate Republican to the American public. But when Bush got into office, he started governing to the hard right. The introduction of Bush into the White House as one of their own, brought the evangelists and the right-wingers out of their stupor. In 2004, they came out in record numbers to re-elect Bush. And because of their support, they are practically demanding that Bush will promote their legislative agenda--and they are getting it with the White House intervention of Terri Schiavo, the stem cell controversy, and now with the pressure of Bush selecting a Supreme Court justice to replace O'Conner. The Religious Right has taken control of the Republican Party, with President Bush as their new spokesperson. And once Bush steps down in 2008, the right-wing will not simply cede power to the moderates. They are going to continue to pressure any Republican presidential candidate to walk and talk their line. Look at Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's role in the judicial filibuster fight, the Terri Schiavo case, and the stem cell legislation. Frist also has presidential ambitions and he's been courting the evangelists ever since he became majority leader.
The Religious Right's power over the Republican Party is almost absolute. They will not cede the power they have to a moderate Republican, for whom they feel may not do their social and political bidding. The only way for moderates to gain control of the Republican Party is for the party to be handed a major string of defeats in both the 2006 midterm and 2008 presidential elections. Republican ideologues such as Pennsylvania's Rich Santorum will have to be defeated in the 2006 elections (And in fact, Santorum's poll numbers have been dropping). The Republican Pary has to self-destruct under its hubris and extremist views--similar to the way the Democratic Party self-destructed in the 1968 presidential elections when Nixon came to power. Will this happen? It is too early to say. The elements for this Republican self-destruction are certainly there--the bogged down war in Iraq, Valerie Plamegate, Bush White House lies regarding the Iraq war and WMDs, Supreme Court nomination fight, an angry and resurgent Democratic Party (although still in disarray since the Democrats do not have an alternative vision to court the voters), and dropping public opinion polls regarding Bush's job performance. The kindling and fuel is there. There just hasn't been a spark to cause the conflagration yet.
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