“So candidates who live in moderate to slightly liberal districts have got to walk a little bit carefully here, because you do not want to put yourself in a position where you’re crossing that line on conservative principles, fiscal principles, because we’ll come after you,” Steele continued.

“You’re gonna find yourself in a very tough hole if you’re arguing for the president’s stimulus plan or Nancy Pelosi’s health plan. There’s no justification for growing the size of government the way this administration and this Congress wants to do it.”

It’s not surprising that Steele and the Republican Party would try to harness the Tea Party movement for an electoral advantage, but the events in the NY-23 special election should make clear that’s a risky proposition. In a moderate Republican district in upstate New York that had not elected a Democrat since the 1870s, a Tea Party-backed, Club for Growth-funded conservative succeeded in forcing a moderate Republican out of the race, only to lose to a moderate Democrat.

It’s no secret that Republicans representing “moderate to slightly liberal districts” tend to be moderate because in many cases a hard-line conservative running in the district would lose to a moderate Democrat. And once elected, moderates in these districts need to continue to appeal to moderate voters in order to get reelected, often by occasionally working with the other party. Granted, the number of moderate Republicans in Congress who Steele is talking about “coming after” — presumably through primary challenges from the right — is small. But the effect of a strategy like the one Steele is threatening would very likely be to drive remaining moderates out of the party — either through primary losses or party-switching à la Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) — and thereby shrink the GOP caucus even further in the name of ideological purity.

It’s particularly noteworthy since TWI asked Steele about this very issue yesterday, and he responded that winning is more important than maintaining ideological purity. “I don’t see a victory in losing seats,” he said. “I’m not in the business of division and subtraction. I’m in the business of multiplication and addition. I want more Republicans going to Congress.”

(Via Ben Smith)

It’s a moderate’s world on Capitol Hill right now, and the latest evidence arrived yesterday when the Democratic sponsors of a controversial labor-friendly proposal dropped the bill’s central tenet: A provision allowing unions to organize by getting a simple majority of workers to sign cards in support. Under current law, workers organize unions by secret ballot. The Democrats’ proposal would have given workers the additional option of a public ballot, making it easier to unionize.

The so-called “card check” bill — supported by President Obama — has been labor’s biggest legislative priority this year, prompting a fierce battle with business groups that have spent bill millions to kill the measure. Moderate Democrats like Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) have come out squarely in opposition to the bill, making the party’s 60-member majority irrelevant. Yesterday, those moderates won an enormous concession with the removal of the card-check provision. From The New York Times:

In its place, several Senate and labor officials said, the revised bill would require shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections.

While disappointed with the failure of card check, union leaders argued this would still be an important victory because it would give companies less time to press workers to vote against unionizing.

The move might have changed the support dynamics on Capitol Hill, but it hasn’t changed the lobbying dynamics. Indeed, labor groups are still supporting the underlying bill — the Employee Free Choice Act — while many businesses are still opposing it. The Workforce Fairness Institute, a business group formed to fight EFCA, just shot out an email announcing its continued opposition based on language that forces government arbitration when workers and employers can’t agree on a union contract.

“The most damaging aspect of the bill — the binding arbitration provision, will remain intact,” the group rued.

With Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) suffering poor health, there’s no guarantee that even the diluted proposal can win 60 Senate votes.

I spent the weekend poring over the CNN exit polls from last Tuesday’s election and converting the state-by-state data for a number of demographics into my own hypothetical electoral maps.

The result is a set of maps that visualize the outcome of an election decided exclusively by the following age groups, genders, income groups, political affiliations, etc.:

Voters age 65 and older:

White voters: (A “black voters” map would be a sea of blue.)

Men:

Women:

Self-described political moderates:

Registered independents:

College graduates:

Voters earning under $50,000 per year:

Voters earning over $50,000 per year:

Voters who are “worried about economic conditions”:

Voters whose “most important issue” was the economy:

Voters whose “most important issue” was the war in Iraq:

(Note: These maps were created with the handy tool at 270towin.com.)