Is it possible to be a “moderate” Republican?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

You can be anything if you put your mind to it

No, you can't be a tomato, even if you put your mind to it.

Well thanks for shattering my plans for this weekend. Do you enjoy hurting people this way?

You're human. You could never be a dinosaur.

You're not the boss of me.

[OSR stands with Israel]

The disconnect is that the mainstream, liberal punditry has equated "moderation" in Republican politics with "sounding nice."  Liz Cheney, John Boehner, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney (among other Sunday morning mainstays) are not moderates in any *ideologicial* sense of the word, but only in that they converse and transact in the preferred euphemisms and tautologies of Democrat-run media.  The policies and philosophies they've championed throughout their careers are decidedly more conservative than anything offered by Trump or Trumpism. 

Just cause Trump was more protectionist than Romney didnt make Romney more conservative than Trump lol. Trump was far more conservative than Romney when it came to things such as the minimum wage, healthcare(remember Romney came up with Obamacare), Trump cut corporate taxes more than Romney proposed and probably to the right of Romney on regulatory policy .


Also no way in hell was Bush more moderate than the guy who wanted to do strict campaign finance reform , voted against Bush's tax cuts , supported cap and trade etc

[Vosem]

There are many contexts where both-sides-ism is dumb, but: the system is set up in a way so that, definitionally, it is equally possible to be a moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican. If you don't see that, then you happen to be very far from where the current center of US politics is. (Which is fine -- I don't think I like much of what both parties agree on nowadays -- but has to be understood.)

[MarkD]

Sure, it's possible. I have two lists of current Republican members of Congress whom I consider to be moderates.

Before I list them, I'll explain how I deemed them to be moderates. I judge the ideology of all members of Congress based on their approval scores from the American Conservative Union and the Americans for Democratic Action. I deem a Republican to be either conservative or moderate depending on their average approval score from ACU, and I deem a Democrat to be either liberal or moderate depending on the average approval score from ADA. I never use just a single year's score to decide what label I will give a member; I need to know their scores after they have served in Congress for at least two whole years. Neither ACU or ADA has yet published their scores for the members of Congress for the year 2020, so, for the lists below, I have excluded any current member who has started serving since March 2018 or later. For Senators who used to be members of the House, I include the average of all the scores they have ever gotten, including their scores from when they served in the House.

The ACU considers a member of Congress to be conservative if they get at least 80%. I myself use the number 76 instead as the cutoff point between a conservative and a moderate. So to me, any Republican who gets an average lower than 76.00% from ACU is moderate, and the rest of them are conservative.

Members of the House (in order of seniority): Don Young, Chris Smith, Fred Upton, Mike Simpson, Mario Diaz-Balart, Jeff Fortenberry, Vern Buchanan, Glenn Thompson, Tom Reed, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Bill Johnson, Mike Kelly, Adam Kinzinger, David McKinley, Steve Stivers, Steve Womack, Mark Amodei, Rodney Davis, David Joyce, Mike Bost, John Katko, John Moolenaar, Dan Newhouse, Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin, David Valadao, Don Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick, Brian Mast, John Rutherford, Claudia Tenney.
(Some of the names surprise me, because they come from states that don't usually elect moderate Republicans. Mike Simpson is from Idaho, Jeff Fortenberry and Don Bacon are from Nebraska, and Steve Womack is from Arkansas, and you don't usually associate any of those states with moderate Republicanism. Fortenberry's career has been especially unusual, regarding his ACU scores, because he has clearly veered towards the center after starting out as a conservative. Fortenberry's scores from the ACU were always in the 80s and 90s for the first six years that he served in the House, but from 2011 on to the present, he has been consistently getting scores in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, for a career average of 73%. Simpson's scores have also been much lower in the last decade than they were earlier in his career.)

Members of the Senate (in order of seniority): Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Hoeven, Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Rounds, Kevin Cramer.
(Special mention for Lindsey Graham, because he has been veering more towards the center in recent years than the way he started out. During the eight years he was in the House, and for the first 10 years he was in the Senate, he had an average ACU score of 89.6%. But for the years 2013 to 2019, inclusive, his scores have dropped way down, to an average of only 65.3%. This has brought his overall average for his entire career down to 82.8%. If he continues on the trajectory that he is currently on, his average may dip below 76% by the time he leaves the Senate.)

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

You can be anything if you put your mind to it

No, you can't be a tomato, even if you put your mind to it.

Well thanks for shattering my plans for this weekend. Do you enjoy hurting people this way?

You're human. You could never be a dinosaur.

How dare you. I'm calling my dinobros as we speak right now to find you.

[SevenEleven]

(Special mention for Lindsey Graham, because he has been veering more towards the center in recent years than the way he started out. During the eight years he was in the House, and for the first 10 years he was in the Senate, he had an average ACU score of 89.6%. But for the years 2013 to 2019, inclusive, his scores have dropped way down, to an average of only 65.3%. This has brought his overall average for his entire career down to 82.8%. If he continues on the trajectory that he is currently on, his average may dip below 76% by the time he leaves the Senate.)

I've never seen a post so thoroughly disprove its own metric like this. Congrats!

[RINO Tom]

No. The only true moderate Republicans left are Independents or Democrats. It was possible to be one before Trump, but seeing how the last 4 years have gone and thinking that the Republican Party can be “saved” or pulled back to the middle is absolutely silly.

This could literally be 110% true, but you guys’ credibility is kind of shot on the subject, lol ... Democrats have been saying that every two years for literally decades.

It’s been true for decades. How many Republicans voted not to shut down the government in 1995 or voted not to impeach Bill Clinton?

Haha, thanks for proving my point!  The poster I quoted literally said it was possible before Trump (i.e., obviously during the Bill Clinton impeachment era).

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The disconnect is that the mainstream, liberal punditry has equated "moderation" in Republican politics with "sounding nice."  Liz Cheney, John Boehner, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney (among other Sunday morning mainstays) are not moderates in any *ideologicial* sense of the word, but only in that they converse and transact in the preferred euphemisms and tautologies of Democrat-run media.  The policies and philosophies they've championed throughout their careers are decidedly more conservative than anything offered by Trump or Trumpism.  

Just cause Trump was more protectionist than Romney didnt make Romney more conservative than Trump lol. Trump was far more conservative than Romney when it came to things such as the minimum wage, healthcare(remember Romney came up with Obamacare), Trump cut corporate taxes more than Romney proposed and probably to the right of Romney on regulatory policy .


Also no way in hell was Bush more moderate than the guy who wanted to do strict campaign finance reform , voted against Bush's tax cuts , supported cap and trade etc

Which Trump and which Romney are we talking about? 1999 Trump would have opposed RomneyCare from the left.

[RINO Tom]

The disconnect is that the mainstream, liberal punditry has equated "moderation" in Republican politics with "sounding nice."  Liz Cheney, John Boehner, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney (among other Sunday morning mainstays) are not moderates in any *ideologicial* sense of the word, but only in that they converse and transact in the preferred euphemisms and tautologies of Democrat-run media.  The policies and philosophies they've championed throughout their careers are decidedly more conservative than anything offered by Trump or Trumpism.  

Just cause Trump was more protectionist than Romney didnt make Romney more conservative than Trump lol. Trump was far more conservative than Romney when it came to things such as the minimum wage, healthcare(remember Romney came up with Obamacare), Trump cut corporate taxes more than Romney proposed and probably to the right of Romney on regulatory policy .


Also no way in hell was Bush more moderate than the guy who wanted to do strict campaign finance reform , voted against Bush's tax cuts , supported cap and trade etc

Which Trump and which Romney are we talking about? 1999 Trump would have opposed RomneyCare from the left.

Not when push came to shove.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Not anymore, McCain spearheaded a movement of moderates Vonivich, Specter, Ted Stevens, Judd Gregg, Gorton Smith.

Those Progressives are gone and the Tea party has moved in. Moderate R means amnesty for Immigrants, not just pro abortion and pro environment, just like Nixon, he had Moderate appeal he created EPA

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

You can be anything if you put your mind to it

No, you can't be a tomato, even if you put your mind to it.

Well thanks for shattering my plans for this weekend. Do you enjoy hurting people this way?

Yes. It brings me great pleasure.

[MarkD]

(Special mention for Lindsey Graham, because he has been veering more towards the center in recent years than the way he started out. During the eight years he was in the House, and for the first 10 years he was in the Senate, he had an average ACU score of 89.6%. But for the years 2013 to 2019, inclusive, his scores have dropped way down, to an average of only 65.3%. This has brought his overall average for his entire career down to 82.8%. If he continues on the trajectory that he is currently on, his average may dip below 76% by the time he leaves the Senate.)

I've never seen a post so thoroughly disprove its own metric like this. Congrats!

Huh??

[SWE]

No. You either support the monarchy or you oppose it

[Person Man]

Through God, everything is possible. We even have a "Marxist" Republican here though most people with a degree in POLS would say he's a Stasserite.

[Santander]

Yes, just like there were moderate Nazis.

[MarkD]

Sure, it's possible. I have two lists of current Republican members of Congress whom I consider to be moderates.

Before I list them, I'll explain how I deemed them to be moderates. I judge the ideology of all members of Congress based on their approval scores from the American Conservative Union and the Americans for Democratic Action. I deem a Republican to be either conservative or moderate depending on their average approval score from ACU, and I deem a Democrat to be either liberal or moderate depending on the average approval score from ADA. I never use just a single year's score to decide what label I will give a member; I need to know their scores after they have served in Congress for at least two whole years. Neither ACU or ADA has yet published their scores for the members of Congress for the year 2020, so, for the lists below, I have excluded any current member who has started serving since March 2018 or later. For Senators who used to be members of the House, I include the average of all the scores they have ever gotten, including their scores from when they served in the House.

The ACU considers a member of Congress to be conservative if they get at least 80%. I myself use the number 76 instead as the cutoff point between a conservative and a moderate. So to me, any Republican who gets an average lower than 76.00% from ACU is moderate, and the rest of them are conservative.

Members of the House (in order of seniority): Don Young, Chris Smith, Fred Upton, Mike Simpson, Mario Diaz-Balart, Jeff Fortenberry, Vern Buchanan, Glenn Thompson, Tom Reed, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Bill Johnson, Mike Kelly, Adam Kinzinger, David McKinley, Steve Stivers, Steve Womack, Mark Amodei, Rodney Davis, David Joyce, Mike Bost, John Katko, John Moolenaar, Dan Newhouse, Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin, David Valadao, Don Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick, Brian Mast, John Rutherford, Claudia Tenney.
- snip -

Members of the Senate (in order of seniority): Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Hoeven, Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Rounds, Kevin Cramer.
- snip -

Now that ACU has published approval scores for the members of Congress for the year 2020, I can update this list. Sen. Mike Rounds just got an all-time high score of 86 for last year, which brings his average to a fraction over 76, which means I don't consider him a moderate any more (I think he'll continue to get scores over 76 in the next six years, so he probably will not return to being a moderate in my system). But now that we have a second year's score for Senators who were in their first full year as of 2019, I can add two other names to the list of moderate Republicans: Cindy Hyde-Smith got only 68 in 2019 and 78 in 2020, which averages out to be only 73, so she - technically - belongs on my list too. And Mitt Romney got 77 in 2019 and 59 in 2020, which averages out to only 68, making him a clear moderate too. A name I should have included above is Roger Marshall, who is a new Senator, but served four terms in the House before last year's Senate election, and who's average for the first three years was exactly 75.00. Now he has just gotten 76 last year, which means he is still a fraction below my cutoff of 76.00. The rest of the Senators I mentioned above - Collins, Murkowski, Hoeven, Capito, and Cramer - got scores no greater than 78 in 2020, and those numbers do not change where they stand in my system of determining the moderates.

There aren't any names in my list of House members who I will delete at this time, but I'll add these names: Troy Balderson, Anthony Gonzalez, Guy Reschenthaler, Pete Stauber, and Michael Waltz. I should probably add Jeff Van Drew as well, even though he's a party-switcher, because he got only a 24 score his first year, when he was a Democrat, and after he switched parties, he got only a 46 as a Republican.

So the Florida House delegation has 5 moderate Republicans, the Illinois delegation has 3, the Michigan delegation has 2, the Nebraska delegation has 2, the New York delegation has 5 (the other 3 Republican New Yorkers are new members of the House and don't have ACU scores yet),  the Ohio delegation has 6, the Pennsylvania delegation has 4, and the Washington delegation has 2. Also, the only Republicans from the states of Alaska, Nevada, and New Jersey are moderates.

[Xing]

How everyone defines “moderate” is different, so I’d actually say it’s impossible to be moderate according to everyone’s individual definition. Also, it’s quite possible to be considered moderate during one alignment, and then see the views of the American public shift to the point where those same views are no longer at the center. You can define your own views however you want, relative to whomever you want, but there’s always going to be someone who will disagree.