4 issues where the GOP must move to the middle in 2016

At this stage of the 2016 election, it is still partisans who define the terms of the race, and they are not interested in compromise. Last year, Hillary Clinton pleaded guilty to being a moderate. Last week, she said she's a progressive who gets things done. Sixteen years ago, George W. Bush had to modify the "conservative" label with "compassionate" to appeal to the middle in the general election. His brother avows that he's a conservative, full stop — or more than his brother was, anyway.

But there will come a time, shortly after the nominees are official, when ideological zeal will be a liability. There is a reason Republicans were embarrassed to hear Mitt Romney describe himself as "severely conservative" in 2012.

So I have a few suggestions on where Republicans can moderate either their positions or their rhetoric. Some of these may be counterintuitive.

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The guiding principle is that the GOP ought to avoid embracing the extreme positions that led to the undoing of its congressional majority in 2006, and the loss of presidential elections in 2008 and 2012. Even though the party is very strong at the state level, it is hardly invincible.

The first issue is foreign policy. The misbegotten Iraq War was the primary reason for Republican defeats in 2006 and 2008. Opposition to a needless ground war in the Middle East catapulted Barack Obama to the White House, and led to a renaissance of outright dovishness among some conservatives in the GOP.

But since the beginning of the primary, candidates like Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and others have touted a cockamamie plan to fight and defeat three sides of Syria's civil war at once. Chris Christie has gone somewhat further in recent weeks by suggesting that the U.S. establish a no-fly zone and shoot down Russian planes that might cross it. This is madness, and one hopes that it's just boob-bait for rich hawkish donors and a few primary voters. The voters in the middle want America to be safe, but the Iraq War reminded them that this safety is neither guaranteed nor enhanced by wars of choice.

The second issue is immigration. Here my views may sound counterintuitive. But Republicans need to bring themselves to the moderate, centrist position of curtailing immigration, after two generations of an extremely generous policy. Rubio has shown some signs of doing this himself. He previously promoted the Gang of Eight bill, the political elite's form of extremism that is fanatically pro-immigration, legal or illegal. George W. Bush's attempt to pass a "comprehensive reform" bill both dispirited the base of his party and generated a general backlash that jammed up congressional phone lines for days.

Third: ObamaCare. Ted Cruz's promise to repeal every single word of ObamaCare on day one of his presidency is electoral suicide and stupid as policy. No Republican should be defending the pre-ObamaCare status quo on health care, either rhetorically or policy-wise. It was a mess. Under the pre-ObamaCare status quo, the federal government was already set to far outpace the spending of many European countries that offer some form of socialized or government-managed care. Republicans must still be the party of "reforming the reform," which means adopting a health care policy that introduces competition and diversity in health plans. But to make health care policy better, Republicans must look to adjust ObamaCare, Medicare, and Medicaid at the same time. Of the three, ObamaCare is the most "conservative" part of our health care system. Attacking it and it alone looks like partisan spite, while also reflecting cowering fear of the AARP.

Fourth: Infrastructure, airports, and rail. Republicans have simply become allergic to public spending on America's infrastructure. At least one way to make inroads into upwardly mobile urban voting blocs is to promise to improve roads and transport into and out of urban areas. And there is a Democratic interest group to beat up on here: transportation unions. A Republican president should promise to use the power of the federal purse to make our transportation networks cheaper for riders, more efficient in administration, and faster. American cities could be booming. But outdated transportation networks are strangling them.

The Republican Party can promise smaller government when it is talking to primary voters and true believers. But once it turns out to face the world, it should enfold that promise within a larger one, that of a more effective and responsive government.