Ideology steers RNC chairman race

A battle for the
soul of the Republican Party has spilled over into the contest for national
committee chairman, as conservative members are prodding candidates to shift
their way.

Now that the
presidential campaign is over and the congressional leadership elections are
settled, conservative activists are turning to the race for chairman as their
next chance to shape the party. 

Already, one
candidate has come under fire for his association with a centrist organization,
while a group of prominent RNC members is set to put others through an
exhaustive test of their personal conservatism.

{mosads}”It’s
important that the chairman be in line with the principles of the Republican
Party as expressed in its platform, and that means the person is a
conservative,” said Indiana National Committeeman Jim Bopp, a prominent
Republican lawyer. “It’s important that the chairman wants to unite all
strands of conservatism, because that’s where we went wrong. We went wrong by
not being faithful to our conservative principles.”

Bopp, along with
nearly half the voting members of the committee, has established the
Conservative Steering Committee, which will meet with candidates Jan. 6 and
hold a straw poll to determine whether each candidate is conservative enough to
serve as chairman. The group is semi-exclusive, with some RNC members invited
to join while others have had to ask to be let in.

Several members
of the steering committee have expressed concern about Michael Steele, a
leading candidate for RNC chairman, and his relationship with the centrist
Republican Leadership Committee. That group, founded by former New Jersey Gov.
Christine Todd Whitman, was made up largely of abortion-rights Republicans,
causing many to attack Steele’s anti-abortion credentials.

Steele considers
himself in the conservative camp but says he joined the centrist group to build
a bridge between the two wings of the party. “Wake up people! What are you
going to do? Are you going to kick [centrists] out of the party?” he said
during an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network.

“I have
watched this party self-disintegrate for the last four or five years. I watched
this party isolate itself from itself,” Steele said.

Other candidates
are having less difficulty identifying themselves as conservatives. Former Ohio
Secretary of State Ken Blackwell ran hard to the right in his 2006 race for
governor, beating out a more centrist candidate in the primary. Blackwell has
won support from traditional conservative groups, such as the Gun Owners of
America, of which Blackwell serves on the board of directors, and the Club for
Growth.

Chip Saltsman,
who ran Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign, is close to many in the
evangelical community and has little trouble convincing anyone of his
conservative credentials. 

And South
Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson’s distinctive drawl and signature smile give
many the impression that he’s a traditional Southern conservative.

Those
conservatives who want to purge the party of centrists consider any perceived
ideological impurity enough to virtually brand one a traitor, and the ranks of
such conservatives within the national committee appears to be growing. 

Still, Steele and
other candidates warn the party needs to widen its base of voters and not drive
potential supporters away, as it has done in the past.

Michigan
Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis is another leading candidate for RNC
chairman who wants to reach beyond the party’s traditional roots. He also calls
himself a conservative. His state, once the epicenter of the Reagan revolution,
is now becoming increasingly blue as the GOP moves away from what it once was.

“We are the
home of the Reagan Democrat,” Anuzis told The Hill, regarding his home state.
Those voters, though, are no longer casting Republican ballots. “We’re
losing people like me. We’re losing suburban voters with four kids who pay
extra to send their kids to parochial schools.”

Most candidates
have resisted staking out ideological turf. Appealing to diverse constituencies
from coast to coast would seem to largely preclude a narrow ideological focus;
a Republican from Washington state has very different priorities from one in
Alabama.

But the 168
voting members of the RNC are the most dedicated and partisan of activists — a
group with which President Bush still has a near-universal satisfaction rating
— and ideology is bound to remain an issue with the committee.

The race is
getting a little nastier beneath the polite compliments exchanged in public.
Some candidates and their aides have begun disseminating opposition research
about their rivals, questioning their ability to do the job or their commitment
to the cause.

Others are trying
to avoid the rift a contentious and protracted battle could bring. California
GOP Chairman Ron Nehring, publicly neutral in the RNC chairman’s race, says
each of the candidates is sufficiently conservative for most members of the
committee. “I don’t see ideology being a driving factor in this contest at
all,” said Nehring, a member of Bopp’s steering committee.

Committee members
so far have largely kept their arguments under the radar, alluding to
candidates’ publicly stated views only in passing. But as the race for chairman
heats up, there looms the prospect of all-out war between conservatives and
those who see a need for reaching out to centrist voters.