The Democrats and Republicans are both looking to display moderation to the American people at their conventions. The two parties manner of doing this differs greatly.

Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Tammy Baldwin, Hillary Clintion, and other liberal stalwarts have dominated the proceedings in Boston thus far, but they have toned down their rhetoric. The right-wing of the Republican party, on the other hand, is almost wholly excluded from the prime-time spots at the Republican National Convention. In their stead, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Arnold Schwarzenegger will speak. The Democrats parade their liberals, asking only that they exercise caution in choosing their words. Republicans hide their conservatives.

It would seem that liberals have less to complain about regarding the Democrats' convention than conservatives do regarding the Republicans' convention.

Flynn,

What are you saying? That the gains of National Review conservatives in the party since 1964 are being slowly reversed?

Or is this hiding of the conservatives merely cosmetic, to attract votes from the middle?

Le G.

It's a little bit of both, Le Gadfly, with the latter driving the former. Basically, the desire for electoral wins overrides putting the true face of the party forward. At a certain point, following this course changes the true face of the party. This has already occurred within the Republican Party.

A friend of mine at DOJ, who is a republican hack and supposedly a movement conservative still thinks that the true home for conservatives is in the Republican party and that the strategy should be more grass roots work and primary stumping. He claims that b/c the platform of the party is still "solidly" conservative that we can still affect things in the party.

I totally disagree with him, I think when the Reps threw out the platform Buchanan et. al. had come up with in 1996 (that is the right year isn't it?) that that was pretty much the death nell for traditional conservatism in the GOP. What good is a "conservative" platform anyway when the party always ignores it in practice? And Santorum's sellout of Toomey demonstrates how unprincipled the GOP actually is. I think that conservatives would be better served to reject the GOP political machine and drive up the percentage of votes that third party candidates like Peroutka get. We should apply pressure to the two main parties from without in order to shape their policies.

I mean seriously the GOP is supposedly going to have a video tribute to Rockefeller at this year's convention!