perhaps, to be a little too cute, by making one of its major villains nelson rockefeller and a principle hero bill buckley. but the fact is rockefeller undermyroned the moderates in a multitude of ways, whereas bill buckley was actually working towards an understanding with them ap quote i came across just in the heat of bill buckley's personal letters where he said i've recently to h to negotiate with ply 15-year-old son regarding who i prom possess weapons as those in the nube clearists in the pentagon, but i found myself not temporizing. the bad word. calculating, figures, renging. i think it's part of the conservative function to do and that not the say-so engage in betrayal. this is the kind of moderate middle ground, small and moderate, perhaps, that some on the conservative side and some on the moderate republican side were working towards. we tend to forget. there were a lot of productive negotiations and working arrangements between them. the ripon society, largely

brought to-of-you supply side economics, or at least some alumni that did, and the riponnites were actually further lady on that than were the conservatives in the party at that time. so i think at most the moderates kind of hoped to have a more constructionive conservatism. and a more big tent conservatism dominating the party. no illusions they would take power back, bu wanted their ideas to prevail and often succeeded. >> there's a -- a take on that that i think is useful. i remember some of our colleagues in those days saying, look, these questions are pretty complimented in this modern world. and they deserve to be aired and debated within both parties. not just between the parties. so i think the ripon role, try to ensure a lively debate within one of the parties, within the republican party, hoping that would then contribute to a broader and wiser debate between the major parties. i think, now i'll express a

bias, i suppose. i think in policy terms, i wouldn't say in rhetoric terms, but in policy term, the moderate philosophy did govern the republican party during the nixon years. nixon without watergate, agree that's very la very hard to imagine. nixon said he'd be remembers for china and watergate, went bad the end of his life. i think if watergate were not there and i'm not saying it shouldn't be. i think it grew out of something i think of nixon's two different people and watergate was one side of nixon, but it wasn't just china. it was the first nuclear -- first reduction in arms treaty of the nuclear age with the soviet union. it was middle eastern policy. it was so many things on the

domestic side that's hard to list them all. i have a class about nixon in part that lists 29 domestic initiatives that people have forgotten. beginning with the first real bold environmental legislation. people can say others initiated think or nixon bass dell sgating to advisers, which he did he had to do it. nonetheless he did it. he embraced it. school desegregation went miles down the road in the first two years of the nixon administration. it's been called, tom wicker in his book "one of us" describes it as rowing with muffled oars, not making a big fuss but getting it done. dual school districts were single race districts, single school districts after two years. social spending, human resource

spending exceeded the defense budget for the first time since world war -- before world war ii under nixon. and those were things that he got done. the whole revenue sharing, federalism set of concepts were brought in. three thing hess ds he did not e are really relevant today. one, of course, people think quickly sometimes of -- john talked about this, welfare reform. guaranteed annual income if i can use that phrase. negative income tax which passed the house edly a easily and hun the senate, never came out. boldest -- not a truly liberal republican idea, i would argue. it had work requirements, other more conservative elements anixn describes these in language that sometimes obscured its boldness, but that was one. second, economic policy.

closing the gold window with economic history in 19, was it 71? and really changed the nature of international economics completely. ron paul now argues -- the worst thing that of happened -- at that same time nixon imposed wage and price controls. the democrats had even talked about for a long time. didn't work very well, but he was willing to try it. the third thing, and i'll end at this, is that nixon's -- i said this so often. say it carefully. nixon's health insurance plan went beyond obama. i worked on it a bit. gone back and read, talk to nixon's health guy. and it included and bragged about and centered on the individual mandate. ted kennedy said before he died,

that was a big mistake he made in the senate, not supporting nixon's health care plan. now we're told that the individual mandate may be unconstitutional. i don't think that argument was even whispered about in the nixon years. now i move on to another list of the 18-year-old vote and the volunteer army, the end of the draft, and pension reform and osha, occupational health and safety act. 29-item list. i think that the moderate republicans in parts stems from the fact the great moderate thrust which had come down through the decades was interrupted and discredited by watergate. nixon couldn't really pass on that legacy. obama today cannot cite nixon as an example. there's a whole-dash whole tradition that sort of is off limits, and i think that's another of the cost of watergate. >> go ahead. >> could i pick up on that?

>> yes. >> the reciting nixon's domestic accomplishments brings to mind the comment made in about 1970 by m. staten evans. only two things i don't like about the nixon administration. it's domestic policy and its foreign policy. yeah. so -- well, the guaranteed income is a great example of one of my themes i haven't brought out yet. it happened, the homagenization of the party started with the democratic party first. you mentioned buckley in '67. he's alarmed, he and moynihan together, alarmed what happened to lyndon johnson. toppled by a mob of radcliffe girls. his phrase. and buckley for reasons of stability and what you just brought up. guaranteed income. friedman said close to what i have in mind. passes the house but dies in the senate and from two sides, ronald reagan, i discovered and quite by surprise, ferociously opposed it and lobbied heavily against it in ways that surprised me in how thick the

file was and secondly, the left was against it. i've talked to somebody who -- it wasn't enough. right. and quotes in one of my books, gene in karn gene mccarthy, can't discuss this. people say today reagan was not really a reaganite. turns out not a mr. clinton goveclinton -- was no a mcgovernite. and most liberals republicans followed. jeff, you point out the rise of the direct primary has empowered -- sort of led to the sort of extremism in both sides. guess what? if you have the old smoke-filled rooms want to get rid of because of reform you could actually reserve the breadth in party and other parts too. nationalization of issues that breaks down -- >> well put. >> that's a big problem. but, yeah. you put your finger on the right thing but that's a key dividing line. nixon was not what -- nixon told

buckley in '67 is the last thing i'll say. i think he said this. i learned when you ran for president you can't run with only the right wing. i learned running for governor, you can't run without them. >> right to win a nomination. left to win the election. called himself a pragmatic liberal when starting out in california politic. i read one memory of him i think worst moment in terms of moderate, in moderate dominance, of politics, most dramatic moment, barry goldwater at the san francisco convention in '64, extremism. >> right. >> liberty is no vice and -- moderation is just -- richard nixon had just introduced goldwater. >> right. >> and sitting right behind him. with a wonderful introduction saying this man was known as mr. conservative, inhe nixon. to the day becomes known as mr. republican.

in november we'll be calling him mr. president. nixon sits down. goldwater starts out with what nixon later called rubs salt and vinegar in the wounds of any moderates who were lingering. and nixon carefully, in that spotlight did not applaud that line. he -- was very much -- i had come to know him by then. he was very much starting to plan, a '68 comeback and just couldn't -- he had to -- he wouldn wouldn't -- would and did support the ticket but was not going to be drawn into that radical conservative. got into a very heated conversation. sitting next to him. just look at the tape. nixon always wanted to play to a broad party base and to include, as inclusive as he could, and sometimes his lack of spontaneity made that an awkward shift.

reminds me of a current kennedy trying to do that. >> when you said transition to, i thought, i wanted to ask, but not on the campaign trail, following many republicans around, but especially our soon to be nominee, and, of course, there are questions about mitt romney's past positions and past governance of massachusetts. how much he has -- but i wanted to open that up later plab maybe to the plan. his lineage, moderate, george romney a significant new york candidate for president in 1968. so can you tell us about mitt romney, his relation to his own past as a moderate republican and also his lineage and what that says about how he might govern? >> i guess the only way to describe the relationship with his own lineage is awkward. you know, if you look at the romney who ran against teddy kennedy and romney who ran

today, they could be running against one another and it's lard to know at this point which would prevail, but somewhere in between there is the real mitt romney, and i think we're going to find out more as we go through the general election exactly where he wants to come down. i mean, through this whole discussion, i mean, the kind of, you know, the elephant in the room, if you will, is ow did how did this party we are talking about that is has lost every shred of moderation, supposedly. no right wing end up nominating a person like mitt romney to be its presidential candidate this jeer part you could say he was blessed with a terribly weak field. which is certainly true. you could say that he had more money than anybody else, and so the weapons they was able to bear against whoever popped up at any given moment were far greater than that person had to

defend himself as they were going through it. but, also, you know, it's a -- it's a reality that what romney decided to do or felt he had to do was -- was become more like the party of today. at least in some nominal ways, to get himself the nomination, and we will see at this point whether that -- just how costly that is in the general election. i mean, the most obvious place is what he's done on immigration. where he went much farther to the right than i think most people believed he needed to, but i think -- i think it -- if you step back and try to put yourself in the shoes of the romney campaign, i think they believe that rick perry bass goi -- was going to be a tough opponent and much better than romney. so they took the perry campaign

in a way they hadn't taken anybody as seriously. te thook that seriously and felt they had to knock him down. there were things they did in the first debate at the reagan library on social security but felt the immigration piece was one they could make him terribly vulnerable to the base, wend ahead and did it and he went farther than that through the course of the campaign. so the romney who has emerged from the nomination battle is somebody who has tried to be comfortable with the tea party republican party and yet as you watch him, as you listen to him and just to sort of the general demeanor of mitt romney tells you that's not quite who he is subpoena the struggle he'll go through over the next several months to is to try to present himself in a comfortable way that keeps the base of the republican party energized. >> i'm going to open it up to the audience. we have microphones around. if you could please identify

yourself. we're start right here in the back. >> ramon bueller. i'm originally from california. and my question is, one of the things that wasn't mentioned here was the new open primary law that passed by initiative in california this last year, which essentially puts the top two people on the ballot and practically empowerses independents. so now the nominees of both parties will have to compete not just against the, with the partisans in their own party registration universe, but with independen independents, and, of course, california sends more than 10% of the delegation to congress. how do you think that will impact moderation both in the republican party and in the democratic party? >> i think, as a fellow californian, i actually think it depends in part on how the district lines are drawn. i haven't followed that because i've been living back leer pap

crazy commission process. my verchs 1990s. two things hanned. passed term limits. toss everybody occupy the state of the legislature and then also because of a deadlock between republican governor and democratic legislature special masters for everything in the 1990s in california. they drew nem the way you do in a civics textbook. continuous cities and town, nestle districts inside, senate districts. my observation was, difficult year, the first half of the decade, pete wilson with huge deficits but reached compromise. you had a lot of more moderate democrats and more moderate republicans because you had districtses that were competitive as opposed to the gerry districts, and each one of the districts, interest groups and the party, sort of extra party machinery and california is the california republican seamly. right?

ramon, you knows those well. the democrat groups on the depic side, republicans on the republican side. th decade, the '80s map highly partisan and this decade. the '90s stands out at different. one thing, actually having a seriously competitive districts and a few on the congressional seats i thought. a few more moderate democrats in the valley. a couple more moderate republican, and that disappeared also i. think actually moderate republicans were largely behind the reforms that came to pass most recently. i think david packard of huest packard, one of the major doan toers that. they used to dominate republican politics when they had the ability to run the democratic primary. earl warning, notorious for winning the democratic primaries as well as the republican primaries. >> nixon won both primaries once. >> he did. >> i just -- quickly, say i have great hopes for california reform. maybe hopes are much too high,

but that might encourage people to play to the center. the two go together, redistricting element and the two winner element. >> i have to say, i'm more skeptical about this whether it will bring about the kind of changes that a lot of people anticipate tore or promotes of it claim or hope. i think the point here, that the republican party today in california is such a different party than it was historically. >> it's not that big moenchtsbi >> mostly because it's so small and unsuccessful with the obvious exception of schwarzenegger and that odd recall election becoming governor. of being able to win staid-wite elections. their record is terrible over the last decade. i think until you build a more viable republican party, it's going to be hard to see this play out in the way that the promotes anticipate. >> ron?

>> "national journal." start with jeff and lee, both, kind of alluding to this. what was the impact on kiv t conservatives? the impact on liberals of having a significant conservative wing in the democrat party? whether congress or the reagan administration, you note even in the reagan administration there were voices of a different faction, a different wing in the party. how did that affect the way choices were made when these issues were debated as you said not only between the parties but within the parties? >> jeff, your book is -- >> sure. i think conservatives had to think about what was going to appeal to people in their party. and then to go on to sell it to the public as well. this actually disciplined conservatives and made them realize the need to actually persuade people of their views rather than simply rally the

troops and impose it over any kind of opposition. and here again i think ronald rangen that was his lieutenant governor. and the only man whose opinion on politics reagan respected i think. i think reagan saw the need from -- after the goldwater defeat that if a republican was going to triumph it had to cooperate with the moderates, and it had to make the case for unaffirmative conservatism that could solve some of the nation's problems. >> and reagan, we often forget, how the rhetoric deteriorated. it was terrible in the early '60s. reagan who imposed this 11th commandment, thou shall not speak ill of another republican. it probably the philosophy of it

too. >> to plug al, has a book coming out on william buckley. >> thank you. >> from new jersey originally. in jeff's book he talks about one of the -- attributes one of the causes of the moderate's demise to their inability or lack of interest in doing precinct work. organization ability. lee talks about the conservatives taking over the party machinery which kind of they relinquished. my question, i look back at that period, you had about a third of the senate called themselves moderate republicans. they had two dozen governorships. i'm from new jersey, not california but the same story. from maine to maryland, couldn't find a state without one or two republican senators or governors. why are they so allergic to doing precinct work? is there any reason for this? the second is, do they have any appeal at all, i want to get to

the cultural issues. nixon's silent majority. they were not all against the new deal. they were not all wallace voters. many were rockefeller voters. there seemed to be no connection between liberal republicans and what we call reagan democrat, union voters, northern catholics, reagan may not have been the leading vote-getter in california but he won by a million votes, a lot of them democrats. we didn't see a lot of that with them. are they going to learn how to give out flyers and do the social networking. we see obama people doing and the tea party doing. where are they? >> driven by some passion, i think, moderates are often less passionate. this was our original complaint when you are looking at both sides of the issue you see the pastel shades, not the bold colors and probably get less excited about all of that. conservatives have had various i

think jeff talks about the feeling of marginalization the conservatives had, kind of driving this energy and this almost desperate effort to get back in control, or leave. there was always the threat of leaving that i think helped, too. also advance their cause. i don't think many moderates had that. maybe on the civil rights issue in the '60s that was there. i think one element we haven't mentioned that has helped to make this disparity more intense is the rise of the religious right, and propelling a lot of that motion on the conservative side of the sfek trum and the unusual dedication of energy, almost what's the right word -- yes, a sense that everything hangs on this. my own identity in life.

moderates had other lives, things to do. many of us wound up doing other things. i wound up leaving the country for a couple of decades. i think that's one dimension of the fact that this -- >> doug bailey, another founding member of the ripon society had a quote. moderates are moderate. raising the sword of moderation and marching on the street, it's a contradiction in terms. the thing about moderates they have doubts, they see the world in shades of grays. if you have no doubts whether that comes from religious certainty you're going to do whatever it takes. you'll make the person investment of your time, energy, passion to see that your view prevails. moderates kind of hope for the best. if it doesn't work out, that's okay too. >> i think there is another aspect to this, though. that is, we now talk about the

moderates as this embattled narrow band always fighting for survival. in fact, if you think of it the other way the moderates were in many ways the establishment. and so every movement that attempted to crack the establishment couldn't do it from the top down. they had to do it from the bottom up. this was the essence of the goldwater revolution in '64, was to go out and organize the grass roots. the religious right as lee pointed out. has done the same thing, now the tea party. in all cases any effort on the part of conservatives to battle the establishment has had to go through the grass roots rather than from the top down. so it's not that moderates were immune to or against doing this, they never really had to. they assumed they were the sort of the historical basis of the republican party, so it was the others who were crashing the party. >> one quick observation. i think individuals make a great deal of difference, without

ronald reagan, without william f. buckley the conservative movement would have looked different. they didn't have thomas dewey. he understood the necessity of organization and got moderates to take over the apparatus. when he passed from the scene so did this perspective. >> reagan talked about picking it up. even iffy had been able to, watergate disqualified him from doing that. >> thank you. john price. the question looks more to the future than the past. we spoke how the moderates were marginal ied in both parties. i spoke to someone about this effort in this election psych tool have an internet-based third way. and i wondered whether it is time at last to think of the demise of the wigs and of an evolution or metamorphosis of the parties, at least one of

them, and whether or not the establishment or the grass roots or the moderates or somebody is going to take the initiative which will have a more centrist party. >> the question about american election and third party prospect s. that where this sentiment -- >> no labels. >> no. in short. we have a two-party system. we're stuck with it. it's not going to change for reasons i could get into but that's the basic answer. the think the parties get taken over from within. my book is a bit provocative in the title. the destruction of the republican party. you could call it creative replacement. with a new conservative party. because the republican party now is the conservative party in all but name. and if moderates have a significant impact in the future it's probably going to have to be through one of the two parties. >> i have a quick one sentence comment. i think that could happen if there was space in the center, both parties went to extremes.

but both clinton and obama chose to preempt the center and i think prevented that from happening and make it unlikely to happen this year. >> i agree with jeff again. this is a disappointment. >> a refund here. >> with this wrinkle. you do have -- more and more people are unaffiliated in the registration of the party though john persuades me that most lean pretty heavily one way or the other. we did see at least 20 years ago the angry middle. mad at both parties and their champion was ross perot. not exactly extreme in perscert other ways. i talked about the radical historical contingency. i can see a possibility, suppose we face three or four years from now, especially if you have the demise of government which the voters seem to like to some extent. seems to replace a separation of

powers as a check on government at some level. and we have the european style financial crisis where the markets punish the country and this town can't fix it. i think there might be a narrow point and would need somebody like bloomberg with a lot of resources to step forward and say enough. and i think that's a narrow window but about the only possibility. other witz i think jeff's right. the way the political system operates makes it almost impossible for that. >> i think there is less space in the middle today than when perot rose up. for the time being there is enough in each party to make them think with the next election they can gain the foothold they want. as long as there is that balance i think the energy is still within the basis of the two parties. the ingredients are certainly there in a lot of ways because of the disgust with washington generally but i don't see it having enough critical mass to rise up. >>