Republicans Must Embrace the Vital Center

Moderate Republicanism has imploded. But a new wave of conservatives could bring it back

John Lund / Getty

Ann Coulter made news at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) by calling John Edwards a vulgar term for a homosexual. At CPAC 2009, Rush Limbaugh urged conservatives to "stamp out" those in their movement who thought the era of Ronald Reagan had ended.

Bottom scraped? Not quite. Next week, Glenn Beck will headline the 2010 CPAC.

It's been a decade since I attended a CPAC, but back in the 1980s I used to plan my year around them. They gathered more ambitious Republican politicians in one place than any other event except a party convention. It was at a...

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