The Moderate Republican

This year, the Republican National Convention has created a website for Republicans to voice their concerns and ideas regarding the Platform. This website will be open for the review of all Platform Committee Delegates for their use in evaluating what issues should or should not be included in our Party Platform.

We need your help!

Visit the Republican National Convention's Platform Portal. Once there, fill out a form that asks you for your name, address, and email address and then your comment that the anti-choice language in the Platform is unacceptable to you, a registered and voting Republican. This is your opportunity to let the Republican Party hear your voice.

Here are a few alternative paragraphs that we are proposing to replace the current language that calls for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Keep reading below for even more talking points.

Option 1:"As Republicans, we acknowledge and respect the honest convictions that divide members of our Party on issues of privacy, personal freedom within ordered liberty, and the role of government in our lives. What unites us on the personal level is compassionate respect for individuals, especially for women, who take responsibility for making private decisions required to nurture families. What unites us as a Party is the right to hold, and mutually to respect, differing positions and beliefs on these matters.''

Option 2:"As Republicans, we all acknowledge the sacredness of human life. We also profoundly respect the principles of liberty, government restraint and minimal intrusion for private life of citizens. Many Republicans, however, are divided on how these beliefs should be incorporated into our nation's laws and regulations relating to reproductive health and related medical science. We believe in the right to hold and mutually respect differing positions and beliefs on these matters"

We cannot let the current anti-choice language go unchallenged and we cannot let the anti-choice movement dominate this web site with their one-sided position. We need you, our pro-choice Republican members, to ensure that the voice of the majority is heard loud and clear.

Go to the Republican National Convention's Platform Portal and register your comments as a voting Republican. Our Platform should accurately reflect the diverse make-up of our Party. Party leaders must recognize that it is our kind of Republicans -moderate, common sense thinkers- who give us the margin of victory in keeping the Republican Majority in Congress. Without us, our Party will lose elections and without our moderate elected officials, our Party will lose the Majority in Congress.

Please contact our National Office (202) 484-3040, if you would like more information and please forward this to every Republican you know - we have limited time to make this major difference.

Dear REP members:

As you may have heard, the Forest Service has proposed a rule eliminating national protection of 58.5 million acres of roadless areas in national forests.

Four years ago, you and your fellow REP America members worked very hard to support the 2001 adoption of a rule protecting roadless areas. Now, our work is being undone through a sweeping Forest Service proposal to let local politicians and special interests dictate management of America's national forests. Later this summer, we will ask all our members to write comment letters asking the Forest Service to withdraw the proposal in its entirety. We'll let you know when and how to do that.

In the meantime, now is the time to send a letter to the editor calling on the Forest Service to withdraw this shortsighted proposal and institute full protection for roadless areas. Below are good reasons for doing so:

Talking Points

Roadless areas protection makes good fiscal sense. Between 1998 and 2002 alone, taxpayers forked over $140 million in subsidies for national forest logging roads. The maintenance backlog on 383,000 miles of existing roads is $8-$10 billion, a huge taxpayer liability.

Roadless areas produce clean drinking water for millions of Americans. More than 350 watersheds in 39 states have roadless areas that serve as source areas for community drinking water systems.

Roadless areas contain high-quality habitat for fish and wildlife, providing incomparable fishing and hunting opportunities for sportsmen and women, and protecting rare types of plants and animals.

Roads allow egress into remote back-country areas, expanding the spread of invasive weeds and increasing the risk of wildfires caused by engine sparks, arson, and carelessness.

National forests belong to all Americans. They should be managed to benefit all Americans, not to please special interests or to serve the parochial interests of local politicians.