Moderate House Repubs: 'More Worried About Pressures From Right'-NOT-Obama/Dems

[kpete]

Moderates Fear Republican Study Committee

Moderate House Republicans "are more worried about the pressures from their right, where the Republican Study Committee is taking names and conservatives are raising the prospect of primary challenges, than about potential fallout from opposing a popular president," reports CQ Politics.

CQ Weekly has a must read piece on the Republican Study Committee, "the caucus of the most rightward thinking members of the House."
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=news-000003026985
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/02/18/moderates_fear_republican_study_committee.html

CQ WEEKLY – IN FOCUS
Feb. 17, 2009 – 9:26 p.m.
New Team Repackages The Right’s Thinking
By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff

In the past, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence have made it their business to advance the cause of conservative orthodoxy at the Capitol. Pence chaired the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of the most rightward thinking members of the House, for two years in the middle of the decade. And for the past six years, part of Cantor’s job as the appointed chief deputy whip was to placate the RSC, to which he also belongs.

This year, however, each assumed a top elected House GOP leadership position: Virginia’s Cantor has the No. 2 post, minority whip, and Indiana’s Pence is in the No. 3 job, chairman of the Republican Conference, or caucus. That has put both former members of the conservative bloc — neither of whom used to shy away from criticizing the more pragmatic GOP centrists — in a politically complicated position. On the one hand, they are being called upon to make the case for reviving their party’s political fortunes through selective accommodation to popular Democratic domestic initiatives. On the other hand, they are advocating positions hard on the right on such issues as taxes and spending discipline with the aim of keeping the party’s base engaged.

.......................

The 2010 Challenge

Such early efforts are the prelude to the big task for Cantor, Pence and other GOP leaders: defining a pragmatic agenda that could help to reposition the GOP caucus, dominated by a growing conservative faction, in the wake of the party’s losses last fall.


interesting stuff:
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=weeklyreport-000003052470

[Demeter]

1. When It gets Bad Enough, They Can Become Democrats

and that should be by summer, or shortly after, by my clock....

[BlooInBloo]

2. Makes sense. No matter how evil your tribe may be, they're the only tribe you've got.

In a cowardly way, that makes total sense.

[depakid]

3. This is one reason why Republicans win (and everyone else loses)

policy battles.

Had progressive Democrats put something similar into play- we might not all be in this mess, which was caused more than in part by DINO's who were (and still are) never held acountable for enabling, legitimizing and even voting for dysfunctional far right policies.

[bluestateguy]

4. There aren't many moderate Republicans left in the House

I'm glaad that we have picked up over 50 seats in 2006 and 2008, but let's also face the fact that many of those Republicans that got bounced were moderates.