A moderate minority

I would pity the GOP moderate, if it weren’t a mythical beast.

OK, I’m exaggerating — but only a bit. “GOP moderates” are at the top of the political endangered species list, and the few lonely survivors are finding it impossible to stay the course. Their choices are few: Switch parties, tack right or face extinction at the hands of an emboldened and radicalized teabagging right.

Establishment Republicans cheered when former Rep. Rob Simmons entered the race against embattled Sen. Chris Dodd (D) of Connecticut. As a well-known moderate, Simmons is exactly the kind of Republican the GOP needs if it wants to win anywhere outside of the South and the Mormon Belt.

Yet moderation doesn’t sell in modern Republican primaries, so Simmons is desperately abandoning any position that might place him to the left of Sarah Palin.

“I was wrong about two issues I supported in Congress — the Employee Free Choice Act and cap-and-trade,” Simmons sheepishly announced. “After hearing more from the people who would be most affected by these bills, I became convinced they would cause more harm than good and I would oppose them in the Senate.” And by “people most affected,” he meant the Club for Growth and the Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck crypto-plutocrats who now run the GOP.

Simmons isn’t the only moderate to cave to his party’s radical right. Rep. Mark Kirk is now facing a competitive primary for Illinois’s Senate seat, despite having the full backing of the Illinois and national GOP establishment. His sin? He voted for cap-and-trade.

But Kirk is contrite! “Briefly, about cap-and-trade, I voted for it because it was in the narrow interests of my congressional district,” squirmed Kirk at a recent rally. Met with boos, he quickly backtracked, “But as your representative, representing the entire state of Illinois, I would vote no on that bill coming up.”

Kirk’s Chicagoland district voted for Obama by a 61-38 margin. The entire state of Illinois voted for Obama 62-37 — meaning Kirk’s district was slightly more conservative than his entire state. So if Kirk were truly evolving his stance to better reflect the state, he’d be moving left. But of course, Kirk isn’t interested in better representing Illinois. He’s interested in saving his ass in a scary primary. And it’s working — his flip-flop earned cheers as he surrendered his “moderate” label.

New Hampshire Republicans, mindful of their state’s leftward drift in the past two election cycles, have been loath to definitively label Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte. Depending on the venue, party leaders laud her either as a real conservative or as a Maine-style moderate, like Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Ayotte seems paralyzed, afraid to open her mouth.

But nowhere is the right’s insane demand for orthodoxy more apparent than in the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, where liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava should’ve had an easy path to victory in a seat vacated by Republican moderate John McHugh. Democrats attempted to recruit her, but she stuck with the GOP and was rewarded with the official party nomination.

The nomination was a tainted chalice, though, as angry teabaggers have put their muscle behind Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Now Scozzafava is broke, party support has been half-hearted, polls show Democrat Bill Owens leading his split opposition, and Scozzafava is cravenly flipping on tax and labor issues. It’s a harbinger of the battles establishment Republicans will face everywhere until they finally realize that the GOP is a regional Southern party that cannot compete nationally. Unfortunately for them, their grass roots doesn’t seem to care.

Moulitsas is founder and publisher of Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com).