After Tommy Thompsons’s early defeat in the 2008 presidential run, he witnessed firsthand the political landscape change as the rug was pulled out from under him. As a moderate conservative, Thompson came in sixth place in the 2007 Ames Iowa straw poll and immediately dropped out of the race. The candidates that beat him represent major denominations of the Republican Party: Romney for big business, Paul the Libertarian, Huckabee for the Evangelicals and Tancredo the racist. A moderate conservative like Thompson had no chance in the 2008 election, further evidenced by the fact that McCain the Maverick moved far to the right during the race and still couldn’t muster the Republican votes needed to win.

Now, with the resignation of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, Thompson intends to run for the vacated seat. The question here is, will Thompson’s moderate and mostly reasonable positions be undermined by his desire to win, pulling him far off center right into Tea Party territory?

First, it is pertinent to investigate his past actions, credentials and policy positions. One may even question whether or not “moderate conservative” is a proper label of Thompson, especially when considering some of his past legislation.

In 1990 he created the School Choice Program, which gave low-income families choices with which they could send their children to school, regardless of their ability to pay. This and other publicly funded educational programs would be seen as “stealing from the taxpayer to fund education programs” by other conservatives, a fundamental part of what defined Thompson’s legacy as governor.

Thompson’s education reforms were generally beneficial, except for his abominable position on teacher-led voluntary prayer in public schools. He also initiated a voucher program that subsidized the cost of tuition for parents who sent their children to religious schools. In places like Milwaukee, some of the religious schools are arguably better than the public schools, yet the voucher seemed to be a violation of separation of church and state. Ultimately, however, these programs helped children in low-income families get better education than they otherwise would have received.

Shifting to other social issues, he has a reasonable position on abortion. He appears to be in favor of stem cell research, a progressive view from a member of the Catholic church. His support shows his opinions are nuanced and that he does not always toe the party line. Thompson has also passed no-nonsense policies that positively affected society, such as the Children First Program, which required fathers who were not paying child support to either find a job and start paying or go to prison. This program also assisted the fathers in finding such jobs.

While Thompson does not have a particularly enlightened position on drug legislation, he at least has the sense to distinguish recreational drug users from serious criminals. In his Felony Drug Offender Alternative to Prison Program, first-time offenders are provided an alternative to prison that focuses on counseling, education and employment training.

By many counts, it may appear that Thompson, a progressive Republican, is actually something of a dying breed, which may explain why he got re-elected four times as governor to a generally blue state. However, there still appears to be a few drops of bigotry in him that he was not able to stifle at a 2007 Republican presidential debate.

When asked if an employer should be allowed to fire a homosexual employee on the grounds that he is gay, he replied, “I think that it is left up to the individual businesses.” The moderator then asked if that was a “yes,” and he replied “yes.” Of course, he apologized on CNN the following day, saying that he had “misheard the question” and thinks there should be no discrimination in the work place. This apology is quite dubious; either he was lying when he apologized or he was lying when he first responded, hoping to garner political points with the far right. Either way, it does not speak much to his political integrity.

It is certainly the case that any politician has to adjust and modify his views to represent those he is serving and to accommodate the particular audience that he is speaking in front of. However, the centrists and moderates among us ought to be concerned with this incredible right wing shift of the Republican Party to radical and ridiculous positions. For example, in the last GOP debate, Tea Party members were yelling for Ron Paul to answer “yes” to whether or not we should let somebody without health insurance die when he or she is brought to the hospital with a potentially fatal injury.

The question as to whether or not we should consider Thompson as a viable choice for the U.S. Senate seat is dependent on whether or not he will fly off the handle like many other Republican politicians trying to appeal to the crazies in their party, or if he will stick true to the fundamental principles and moral positions that he has taken in the past.

Matt Jeffers ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in philosophy and economics.