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When the Center Held

November 9, 2005

The fight’s not over yet. But the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still closed to oil production and the noise, fumes, pollution, trash, and clutter that is deleterious to wildness.

Thanks to sheer cussed determination, patriots who want to hold onto one of the few remaining places of untamed creation in America won an important battle in Washington DC this week. The defenders of wilderness held off the most serious charge yet by grasping legions that cannot bear the thought of exempting a few pristine treasures from humanity’s consumption machine.

And for that, you can thank two dozen or so House Republicans who represent the small but extant political gene pool of an old-fashioned conservatism that values conservation, thrift, and prudence, all of which justify leaving the Arctic Refuge alone and rethinking our country’s dangerously risky energy habits.

The centrists listened to their constituents and stood their ground. They forced House leaders to drop language authorizing Arctic Refuge oil drilling from a massive budget “reconciliation bill.” The drilling proposal may yet resurface if and when the House and Senate attempt to craft a compromise budget bill for 2006 later this fall.

Nevertheless, the centrist Republicans’ victory is highly significant. By holding their nerve, the centrists - small in number though they may be - held the balance of power in a closely divided House. They used that power to good ends - protecting America’s wilderness legacy for future generations, demanding a sensible energy strategy that gets America off the oil dependence treadmill, and breathing new life into the GOP’s old conservation tradition.

Nothing succeeds like success. Having acquired a taste for victory, the centrists are better positioned to win future battles and steer lawmaking back to the mainstream where people can find common ground and get things done for the greater good. For a citizenry that has been fed a noxious diet of extremism and partisan gridlock in recent years, that can only be good news.