The GOP Must Not Alienate Its Moderates

The following blog was posted by RMC Executive Director Kellie Ferguson at the Hill's Congress Blog. You can read the original post here.

As an organization who has fought to elect Republicans to Congress, it is outrageous to hear the continuous cheers from members of the GOP over Senator Specter’s Party switch. Whether or not you agree 100% with every vote Senator Specter has taken, he is a three decades long Republican leader who served on key committees and carried the GOP banner dozens of times on major issues. More disturbing is that GOP leaders are missing the fact that Specter followed over 240,000 Pennsylvania voters who left the GOP last year. These voters were socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republicans who felt so alienated by the GOP’s strident moral agenda that they turned to the Democratic Party. They are a bellwether for what is happening in States across the Nation and this cannot be ignored. Moderate Republicans like Senators Snowe and Senator Collins need to know that the real Republican majority- the moderate majority- supports them in their work and as centrists who work for their Party AND for their electorate. Senator Boxer’s comments suggesting that there is no room for pro-choice leaders in the Republican Party are way off. We need more of them and we need the moderate majority to demand more from the Party leadership, which has pandered for too long to a small faction of extremists. We have compromised our foundations by promoting risky, divisive social wedge issues and we are paying for it by losing seats and legislators across the country. Without change and wooing back of social moderate voters, the Party will continue to collapse.

RMC Executive Director Comments on Sebelius

RMC Executive Director Kellie Rose Ferguson commented to the Hill today on the nomination of KS Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to the position of HHS Secretary. Some right-wing extremist GOP groups are threatening to fight the nomination, including OK Senator Tom Coburn, on the grounds that Sebelius is pro-choice- though she is personally pro-life. Ferguson warned the GOP not to continue down it's extremist path of using social wedge issues like abortion as a litmus test. Click here to read the article and tell us what you think in by commenting below.

RMC Executive Director Blogs on The Hill

RMC Executive Director Kellie Ferguson posted a blog on the Hill's Congress Blog today talking about the reaction throughout the Party of the recent partnership announced between The WISH List and RMC (Republican Majority for Choice), and spoke about a recent study in the state of Pennsylvania that showed moderate Republicans fleeing an increasingly hostile Party. The blog can be read here, and we encourage you to leave your thoughts and comments.