What ever happened to the Republican Party that I could vote for? This might sound like a silly question coming from a self proclaimed "left of center moderate" (shouldn't I be voting only Democrat, you might ask), but please hear me out.

Once upon a time, I would have been able to choose from two parties rather than just one, especially in my state of Oregon that was home to so-called "liberal Republicans" Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood, Tom McCall and others. This year, in which I will vote in my first Presidential election, I will not have the ability to choose possessed by my parents and grandparents, however.

This choice I speak of was not limited to my native state of Oregon, though we have a grand history. From the time of its roots in Ripon, Wisconsin 150 years ago, the Republican Party tended to be the moderate balance to the generally conservative Democratic Party. Abraham Lincoln could be labeled nothing if not a liberal. Theodore Roosevelt is of course considered one of the great leaders of the progressive movement, as were Hiram Johnson of California and Robert "Fighting Bob" LaFollette.

Even after the Democratic Party cemented its place as the "liberal" faction within American politics following the elections of 1912 and 1932, the presidential wing of the GOP tended to favor liberals or moderates. From 1940 to 1960, each of the party's candidates ran near his opponent ideologically, and Dwight Eisenhower's acceptence of FDR's New Deal policies helped to make said social advances accepted by all Americans, left and right.

Through the 1980s and early '90s, the Republican Party's congressional ranks still swelled with liberals and moderates. Moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter--who faced stiff competition in a primary challenge from the right this year, spoke of this in an interview with The New Yorker in April.

"When I came to the Senate, we had a lot of members of the Wednesday Club"-a weekly gathering of Republican moderates. "You had Lowell Weicker, you had Bob Stafford, you had Bob Packwood, you had Mark Hatfield, you had [John] Chafee, you had John Danforth, you had Jim Jeffords, you had John Heinz. Now there are only a few of us. And it's important. When Joe Biden needs a co-sponsor, he comes to Arlen Specter. That kind of balance is really important for the country. It's more than the soul of the Republican Party; it's to have some balance within the Party and within the two-party system."

When I was just about old enough to begin following politics in the mid-'90s, my two Senators, Hatfield and Packwood, were chairmen of the Appropriations and Finance Committees, respectively, so moderates were still the leading voices in the party even as Newt Gingrich tried to usurp its reigns.

So, what happened?

Many pundits and talking heads constantly shout at each other that the problem with politics today is partisanship, bitter partisanship. They'll say that there are blue states and red states that share no common values and that people's party affiliation means more than everything. Let me tell you something: they're wrong.

Our country has always had partisanship, even when Federalist 10 was published decrying factions within American politics (remember it took but a few years for James Madison, the paper's author, to become the bitter partisan opponent of his former chief ally in writing the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton). The terms of debate haven't even deteriorated, like some commentators might lead you to believe (Hamilton, Burr and Jefferson were constantly attacked for their extramarital affairs, and Democrats were called the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" 63 years after the end of the Civil War). As a result, I find it highly dubious to claim that the main problem afflicting American politics today is partisanship.

Let's look a little bit deeper.

During the 1980s, when Representative Bob Michel (R-IL) was the House Minority Leader, a few young Republican Congressmen hated the fact that Michel worked well with the Democratic leadership to pass good laws. They wanted the Republicans to lead strong opposition to the Democrats merely to inhibit the majority from passing any moderate legislation. Who were these men? Newt Gingrich, Vin Weber, and a man who would later become Vice President, Dick Cheney (read about this in Jack Pitney's "Congress' Permanent Minority?").

These three men, and their minions, worked to build a new conservative Republican coalition by knocking off conservatives from the Democratic ranks. Once they had defeated most Democratic moderates and their party gained majority status in the Congress in 1994, they and their followers then turned their attention to defeating Republican liberals and moderates. That doesn't really make sense if they only cared about partisanship.

The truth of the matter is that such men care significantly more about ideology than partisanship. I'm not speaking about debatable theory; these men only believed in one orthodoxy that should not be challenged by anyone. Through superior political skills, they were able to hijack the national agenda and take center stage in American politics.

Today, this ideological faction's leaders are not Newt Gingrich and Vin Weber; they're George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay and Rick Santorum (among others). What is more, they are much more dangerous to American politics today than they were then because their power is nearly unchecked. It is these men who have destroyed American politics and the Republican Party.

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Perhaps I'm merely a sentimentalist. I surely do pine for the days of yore.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist. I see the glass as half full, whereas I could be thankful for the ability to vote for one party even if I might have been able to choose among two.

I think I'm prescient and optimistic, however. I believe in an America where I can choose between two equally appealing parties that care more about what's right for America than what's right for their ideology. I believe that we can steer both parties back to the bargaining table where they can work together rather than connive to undercut one another. I believe that in a few short years we will look back at this period and say this was the beginning of change. I believe in the Jewish axiom, "Gam Zeh Ya’avor," this too shall pass.

This too shall pass!

So perhaps this is not a eulogy. Perhaps it is a vision of a future in which I and everyone else around the country have a real choice between to parties equally palatable, each wedded to progress rather than orthodoxy. It may be a dream today, but I'm sure it can become a reality. We just have to want it as much as them, and moreover work as hard as them to reach our goal of a better America.

This can be done. This must be done. This will be done.