Can McCain lead GOP revival in Northeast?

“When you are a moderate, as most of the Republicans from the Northeast are, you’re always on the knife edge,” said former Rep. Amory Houghton, who represented an upstate New York district from 1987 to 2005. Houghton is a New York delegate to the convention.

Houghton, former chief executive of Corning, said, “We’ve got two wars. One is with the Democrats and the other is within our own party. We’re trying to reconfigure and reposition the party. Our base in New York is different from the base in Texas. You can’t lose the base, but at the same time, we’re not going to win with only that base.”

Need for 'a larger tent'
Coming up to greet Houghton on the convention floor, Rep. Peter King, who represents a suburban district in Nassau County, New York, said, “I probably have been more conservative than Amo (Houghton) over the years, but we have to reach out, we have to have a much larger tent than we’ve had recently.”

King argued that McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate “could attract large numbers of women who ordinarily wouldn’t be that attracted to the Republican Party — not because of her particular views but because she is really a unique 21^st century woman, five kids, governor of state, an athlete, and her husband’s a blue-collar worker.”

But King was chagrined that GOP conservatives had apparently scuttled McCain’s idea of having Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate.

Lieberman will address the convention Tuesday night.

Why not Lieberman?
“He’s a Democrat, he’s pro-choice, we disagree on some issues but he’s a strong national defense Democrat,” King said. “And when people around President Bush started to mention Joe Lieberman’s name, the right wing went crazy. They said they’d rather lose the election with a conservative vice president, than win it with Joe Lieberman. This is madness.”

But one Connecticut delegate, Santa Mendoza, an attorney from New London, Conn., said, “We would have been absolutely devastated as a delegation” if McCain had picked Lieberman “because Joe Lieberman is a liberal Democrat. We know the real Joe Lieberman.”

“As far as Connecticut is concerned, McCain really has to bring home his ideas about energy. We have a very cold state. It costs a lot of money to get heat in Connecticut,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza said what most gave her hope was the generational shift personified by Palin and by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who’d also been on McCain’s short list for running mates.

“There’s a real feeling of excitement right now that the party has a future through them.” Mendoza said.

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