A Splintered Unity Platform

While the base is conservative and the administration is drifting so far into the outer reaches of ideological space that they're red-shifting from the Doppler effect, the prime-time speaker lineup is anomalously moderate – so the RNC must run a delicate tight-wire act to make it seem like the principles in play aren't mutually exclusive. But as the Republicans get ready to take their turn at presenting party unity in New York, the GOP's moderate malcontents made themselves known – and were all but ignored by the leadership – at the Republican Platform Committee meetings that got under way this morning in the cavernously empty Javits Center. The Log Cabin Republicans, the gay organization that the RNC tries to ward off like the evil eye, along with the Republicans for Choice, hatched a plan to either strike or soften language in the platform that endorses constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and abortion. They also wanted to offer a "Party Unity Plank" that says republicans can agree to disagree on such sensitive topics.

A Unity Plank would seem like a no-brainer for a party that, at every turn, is claiming to be unified. Here's what it said:

"We recognize that the Republicans of good faith may not agree with all the planks in the party's platform. This is particularly the case with regard to those planks dealing with abortion, family planning, and gay and lesbian issues. The Republican Party welcomes all people on all sides of these complex issues and encourages their active participation as we work together on those issues on which we agree."

Except that the Republican Party apparently does not welcome people on all sides of these complex issues, because that means infringing the monopoly of social conservatives. Like former Reagan operative and ultra-conservative Gary Bauer, whose latest specialization has been targeting moderate Republicans in their own primaries – Bauer was involved in the Patrick Toomey's right-side ambush of Arlen Specter – and who was sitting in the audience as the moderates' insurgency ran aground by 10:00 am.

The morning had been planned as a beachhead. The subcommittee on "Protecting our Families" is the locus of the platform's pro-life and anti-gay language, and that's where the moderates hoped to make their changes. "But they stacked the subcommittee against us," complained Anne Stone, the Chair of the Republicans for Choice. "There are two members from each state delegation to the convention on the platform committee. Those are then assigned to the various subcommittees. They waited until the last minute to make those assignments." This tactic, she explained, prevented them from finding a sympathetic committee member who could introduce their amendments. All their known allies were – "big surprise!" Stone said – assigned to other subcommittees.

The Log Cabin and Republicans for Choice see this in conspiratorial terms. They point out that the entire platform committee process has been condensed to two days (in past years it has run twice as long); that the draft platform was released only the night before when it's usually available for weeks; that the scheduling details and appointments were delayed and even kept secret until the last minute. "Usually we have lead time for lobbying," said Stone. This time, they've been "kept in the dark."

Stone has experience with this kind of maneuvering. In 2000, the Republicans for Choice managed to get the pro-life constitutional amendment language removed for about 15 minutes, until Henry Hyde used a procedural move to revisit the issue and restore it.

This time, the entire Protect Our Families subcommittee meeting went by without even an opportunity for Stone or her Log Cabin collaborators to propose their language. Former RNC Chairman and current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, whose chairmanship itself was perceived as a signal that the RNC was not interested in compromise with the moderates, sailed through the draft, re-affirming it quickly, despite knowing there were people in the audience who wanted to be heard. "I talk slow, and move fast," Barbour later said to colleagues.