After three straight losses in special elections, including the loss of the seat held by former Speaker Denny Hastert and two seats in the Deep South, the House GOP is in a panic.
“When you’re losing, people are suspicious if you change. Republicans have defined themselves on these issues for three decades.”
– Congressional scholar
Based on the new “American Families Agenda” House Republicans released this week, the results from their polling and focus groups were scorchingly clear: Normal Americans are concerned with kitchen table issues like jobs, healthcare and gas prices — as well as George Bush’s botched occupation of Iraq — not with rightwing obsessions like oppressing gay people and transferring control of women’s reproductive organs to government bureaucrats. These and other red-meat issues for the GOP base are completely absent from the new agenda:

There’s not a single mention in the 47-point program of such red-meat GOP issues as banning abortion, outlawing same-sex marriage, allowing prayer in the public schools, banning flag burning and protecting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Instead, the plan focuses on such GOP-introduced ideas as allowing private sector workers to take compensatory time instead of premium pay for overtime worked (HR 6025) or permitting full tax deductibility for most medical expenses (HR 636).

In an effort to appeal to moderates in their uphill push to retake the House, Republicans have pushed divisive social issues off center stage and replaced them with a host of pocketbook items they hope will appeal to working women, moderates and even some Democrats.

Julian Zletzer, a congressional scholar based at Princenton University, said the Republicans retreat from issues favored by its base is risky because it sends a signal that they are losers. “When you’re losing, people are suspicious if you change,” he said. “Republicans have defined themselves on these issues for three decades. It’s much harder to divorce yourselves from them.’’

The risk here, of course, is that the GOP base will feel abandoned. Who needs two Democratic Parties, they might ask.