The New York Times and The Washington Post seem to be in unison today, tackling two sides of the apparently divided Republican Party. To begin, The Post's Jonathan Weisman pens an article today on splits within the GOP caucus on the critical issue of Social Security.

In October 2001, with the White House divided over the steps necessary to preserve Social Security, then-economic adviser R. Glenn Hubbard presented President Bush the stark choices that he believed Bush had to make: raise revenue or cut promised benefits.

Hubbard prevailed over other White House advisers who argued that large private investment accounts and trillions of dollars in government borrowing could ensure Social Security's long-term solvency with no benefit cuts whatsoever. But 3 1/2 years later, the fissures that once divided the White House continue to split the Republican Party at large. Those fissures were on display anew yesterday when the House Ways and Means Committee convened its first hearing on Social Security restructuring.

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White House aides have been trying to put the public dispute to rest for months, if not years. But their failure to do so has left the GOP looking divided, next to united Democrats, who say they will not negotiate until Bush puts aside his call for private accounts financed through Social Security taxes.

While Weisman looks at the specific case of Bush's bid to privatize Social Security, The Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes yet another installment of the "plight of Republican moderates" meme.

From the fight over Mr. Bolton to the looming blowup over the president's judicial nominees to the debate over the proposal to overhaul Social Security, Republican moderates are caught in the middle as never before. As they look to the near future, to a possible vacancy on the Supreme Court, they realize that the pressures will only intensify.

"Bolton is a perfect example of putting the moderates in an impossible situation," said Senator Lincoln Chafee, the Rhode Island Republican who also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and who agonized publicly over Mr. Bolton for weeks. "It's a no-win. Either we don't support the president or we vote for a very unpopular pick to represent us at the United Nations."

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[H]ere in the Capitol, [moderates] are so few, said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, that they quit having their weekly lunches about a year ago.

"Susan and I were there alone for so much of the time," Mr. Specter he said, referring to Senator Susan Collins of Maine, "we worked through all of our conversation and decided to disband."

As Mr. Voinovich's refusal to support Mr. Bolton's nomination demonstrates, "the vanishing center"-as another centrist Republican, Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, often says - can still play a powerful role. There are just four core centrists in the Senate, Mr. Chafee, Ms. Collins, Ms. Snowe and Mr. Specter. They are joined from time to time by mavericks like Senators John McCain of Arizona, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mr. Voinovich.

These articles underscore the risks imposed by aiming for too large of a majority. Just as with the Democrats -- who finally lost their dominant coalition in the late 1960s as conservative Southerners and liberal Northerners could no longer stand each other -- the Republicans could find themselves shedding enough moderates to find themselves in the same shoes as their party in 1964: too radical to win more than a handful of states. This might be a long way from happening, but if the four moderates in the Senate continue to be replaced with arch conservatives, there could be a realistic shift of centrist voters away from the GOP in the coming years, leaving the party with a majority only in the reddest of states.