A food fight in the Big GOP Tent

Let he who is without sin ...
Inside the Big Tent, the “Gang of 14” deal pitted libertarians against the religionists, with Bush – who rose to power by taming both – caught in the middle. Faith-based conservatives felt betrayed by the bi-partisan deal and with good reason: they were betrayed.

But most of the GOP members of the Gang don’t feel guilty about it – they are (privately) delighted. Many other Republican senators, who stayed away from the filibuster-judges deal for various reasons, were relieved that rules of the Senate were saved and that religious conservatives were, in essence, told to shove it.

Bush and Karl Rove had hoped to change the rules before the big clash over the Supreme Court, clearing the way for the president to put forward a jurist considered solid by the religious right on their cluster of  crucial issues: abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, cloning and gay marriage. If I know Bush, he will go ahead and do so anyway. If he does, I bet that the Democrats in the Gang of 14 will declare the existence of the kind of “extraordinary circumstance” that will free them from their vow not to use the filibuster. And then the GOP moderates will have to declare themselves – and the war within the Republican Party will be on, big time.

Moderates will once again be asked – as they almost were this time – to vote to change the Senate rules. This is something they didn’t want to do, and, I bet, will never want to do. Here’s why. (Bear with me while I wade into some arcane Senate parliamentary detail; it matters.)

The moderate/traditionalists’ concern wasn’t solely or even primarily about diluting the 60-vote supermajority needed to end a filibuster. It was the WAY Sen. Bill Frist was proposing to do so. By long tradition, it takes a two-thirds vote – 67 senators – to alter a so-called “standing” rule in the Senate, such as the one about filibusters. Frist was proposing it by mere majority vote. 

That notion – that you could change long-standing rules by a mere majority vote – was viewed by Senate traditionalists, old and young, as more than unacceptable. It was outrageous to the likes of Republican Sen. John Warner, an old-fashioned Virginia Cavalier who thinks of the Senate as a Platonic redoubt of republicanism of the most ancient sense. He was the key to this deal. Something else about him: a hunt country patrician of the old school, Warner never has been a fan of (or a favorite of) Rev. Jerry Falwell and Dr. Pat Robertson, Virginia’s pulpit-based powers. He’s not their man.

Sen. George Allen is. Within hours of the deal, Allen had a hot-linked ad all over the web, seeking to harvest the anger of religious conservatives. He ran the GOP’s Senatorial campaign committee not so long ago – and, more important, is seriously thinking of making a run for the GOP nomination in 2008.

The first primary of '08
In fact, the race for the 2008 GOP nomination has begun, and it could well be a bloodletting.

Bush was able to lock up the nomination early in 2000; even then it wasn’t easy. But this time around there is no obvious successor to Bush, and the most visible candidate right now – Sen. John McCain – is with the president on Iraq, but very little else. He didn’t formally launch his candidacy this week, but that press conference of the Gang of 14 may as well have been it.

McCain is picking up where he left off after his centrist campaign was crushed by the Bush-connected religious right in South Carolina in 2000. McCain insists that it isn’t personal and, in one sense, he is correct. He’s not anti-Bush; he just wants to end what he sees as the faith-based right’s death-grip on the soul and sinews of the GOP.

But so far McCain is, well, just McCain. It remains to be seen if he represents a new GOP movement or just his old renegade self.

There could be other candidates in the race of the McCain stripe, among them Rudy Giuliani or even Condi Rice. But most contenders will seek the support of religious conservatives: Allen, Senate GOP Leader Frist (whom McCain outmaneuvered this week), Sen. Rick Santorum, maybe even Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Far from fearing the role of religious conservatives, they welcome them – and see the crusade for adherence to traditional biblical values as the saving grace of the party and the American family.

It’s the most wide-open Republican race in many years. Is that a good sign for the long-term health of the GOP? I’ll let you know in November – of 2008.

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