Centerfield

Organization Matters

A new column by David Broder highlights in the clearest terms why organization matters in politics.

It matters for anybody, with any political views. But Broder illustrates the particular importance for moderates.

He talks about the recent formation of what has rapidly become the most important Republican centrist organization -- the Republican Main Street Partnership:

Why were the moderates, who had been rolled so many times in the past, able to stand their ground this time? It turns out that without attracting much notice, they have been muscling up for just this kind of fight.

In 1997 Rep. Amo Houghton, a classic Eisenhower Republican and industrialist from Corning, N.Y., started something called the Republican Main Street Partnership to link the "Tuesday group" of House GOP moderates to outside contributors who prefer that kind of party.

Over the years, the group has expanded its fundraising capacity to the point where it could put $1.7 million into campaigns for like-minded challengers in 2002, and it has built a six-person staff under Sarah Chamberlain Resnick. This is tiny compared with the conservative apparatus in Washington (or the Democratic Leadership Council, on which Main Street has modeled itself) but a breakthrough for this wing of the party.

Thus, if you organize just a bit, you gain a distinct voice in politics and the power to actually change legislation.

Another lesson, however, is playing itself out on the airwaves in the districts of some of these leading Republican moderates. Because they have a distinct effect on policy, conservative groups are becoming more and more interested in finding ways to oppose and even replace them. They're already running remarkably bitter attack ads in the districts of leading moderate Republicans like Sen. Olympia Snowe.

We have to be prepared for that kind of backlash, and we simply can't allow moderates to be punished whenever they succeed in having an impact on policy. We must back them with the same financial and grassroots resources that liberals and conservatives always bring to the table.

Posted by Blogadmin at April 20, 2003 05:37 PM