Moderate success.

``I THINK Republicans across the country need to mature if they wish to govern,'' says Rep. James Greenwood (R., Pa.). ``Keeping the base energized is important. But so is the adage that politics is about addition, not subtraction.'' The day before, Greenwood's politics had definitely been about adding, at least in one sense. His amendment to the Labor, Health, and Human Services appropriations bill restored $193 million of funding for Title X of the Public Health Services Act, the family-planning program that is anathema to social conservatives.Greenwood's victory -- courtesy of 56 other wayward Republicans -- capped a tumultuous tug-of-war between GOP moderates and conservatives that for a week in early August strained the leadership's ability to run the House. In the end, the legislation underlying the dispute -- the Labor, HHS appropriations bill -- passed with its status as the most conservative product of the appropriations process intact. But the tussle over Title X underscored the intermittent ability of GOP moderates to succeed in a politics of ``addition'' that risks subtracting the GOP's most committed and active supporters.Title X ranks with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Legal Services Corporation as a long-standing and seemingly easy conservative target. The program's language forbids any of its funds from being devoted to abortions. But Planned Parenthood, which runs clinics responsible for an estimated 134,000 abortions a year in the United States, gets roughly $30 million annually in Title X funding. The money doesn't go directly for abortions, but, as Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.) points out, ``money that goes into the left pocket frees up funds in the right pocket to be used for abortions.''From the start, Title X had well-placed friends. The chairman of the Labor, Health, and Human Services Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, John Porter (Ill.), is a devotee of Planned Parenthood who could not bring himself to tighten its belt even as he presided -- to his credit -- over deep cuts in almost every other social program in his jursidiction. He left Title X funding as it had been. The full Appropriations Committee had to do the lifting -- abolishing Title X and converting its funds into block grants for two health programs.Greenwood demanded a floor vote to restore the funding and got the agreement of the leadership. Smith and other social conservatives balked, arguing that Greenwood was getting special treatment. They threatened to vote against the crucial ``rule'' (setting the terms of debate for the bill) unless Greenwood was blocked. Greenwood and other moderates, meanwhile, threatened the same unless the amendment could be offered. ``It's much easier on [conservatives] if we protect things from even having a vote,'' says one leadership aide. ``The trouble is that that so angers people it makes managing the House almost impossible.''The leadership threatened to bring the bill to the floor without a rule, a meltdown scenario that would have scratched Title X funding but also all other provisions in the bill dear to conservatives. In the midst of the heated back-and-forth, one moderate suggested the two sides sit down together to hash it out. ``[Majority Leader Dick] Armey said, I've done that in the past on Legal Services and on NEA and on other issues,'' recounts an aide. ``But on this issue I'm not sure it makes sense to bring folks into the same room.'' Eventually they did get together and work out a compromise that allowed a vote on Greenwood -- but only after a vote on an amendment that would preserve the block grants.Once there was an agreement, Greenwood hustled. ``We did nothing,'' he says, ``except make phones calls on this issue and organize all of our efforts down to the minute.'' The Title X vote brought along more than the forty-some Republicans who typically defect on abortion issues. Possible swing votes like Douglas Bereuter (Neb.) and Clay Shaw (Fla.) went with Greenwood. Republicans who normally would have been susceptible to leadership pressure, like Tom Davis (Va.), a freshman sub-committee chairman, voted with Greenwood too. Says Family Research Council head Gary Bauer, ``There is power in the Speaker's office which he uses quite regularly on other issues that it didn't appear he used on this one.'' The leadership maintains it can't bring its leverage to bear on every issue (on abortion votes it generally doesn't ``whip'' at all). ``Those are the kind of members we lean on pretty frequently for things,'' says a leadership aide. ``To lean on them on abortion would probably be more leaning than could be tolerated.'' Nevertheless, the symbolism of the leadership effort was particularly bad. Social conservatives say they had a commitment from Gingrich that he would signal the importance of the Title X issue by ending the floor debate with a speech of his own. But when the amendment came up, he was in a Northeast Washington high school holding a forum with residents about the future of D.C.Action on the bill the next day staved off a conservative revolt. Aides say Gingrich sat down with the moderates, explaining that now that they had won one they had to give a little. The set of moderate amendments that would have preserved, among other things, a requirement that states use Medicaid funds to pay for abortion in cases of rape and incest, and that scuttled an effort to scale back lobbying by federally funded non-profits, all lost. The bill, which cuts $9.1 billion and elminates dozens of programs including Goals 2000 and the Surgeon General's office, won 219 votes on final pasage with such moderate stalwarts as Nancy Johnson (Conn.) and Chris Shays (Conn.) sticking with the leadership to vote for the bill.Social conservatives wound up getting most of what they wanted, but are distrustful of the leadership. ``Most of the social-issue conservatives feel if we hadn't been obnoxious all week, pouring calls into Newt's office and banging on the tables, all the pro-life provisions would have been in doubt,'' says Bauer. Moderates aren't happy either -- although they can count on Arlen Specter, chairman of the relevant appropriations subcommittee, to take the conservative edges off the bill. And the leadership is caught in the middle.One aide explains that the trouble is that the 180-some conservatives in the Republican caucus often don't have anywhere to look for support except in their own party, while the roughly 35 moderates can combine with the Democrats. ``So,'' he says, ``what you have to do to keep this majority intact is you have to think every day what can we give [the moderates] knowing that they're swallowing eight out of every ten things. The trouble is the conservatives want ten out of every ten things. So what can we give [the moderates] that will make them happy? They just wanted an up-or-down vote [on Title X]. And the conservatives weren't even willing to give them that.''Some give to the moderates may indeed be only a bow to reality. But whenever moderates get their way over issues important to social-issues voters there's a risk. ``The Democrats,'' Greenwood says, drawing an analogy with the GOP, ``more and more caved in to the leftmost members of their party, forcing mainstream Americans and obviously a lot of their own members across the aisle.'' But on many issues -- school prayer, federally funded abortions -- the rightmost Republicans are more in the mainstream than Beltway insiders or congressmen from Northeastern districts. Tacking to a phanton mainstream just leaves GOP voters disappointed and majority opinion unrepresented.The best resolution to the House's moderate - conservative tension, ultimately, may come by way of little-known names like Richard Rinaolo. The Illinois businessman is considering a campaign to knock off Title X champion John Porter in next year's GOP primary. How's that for subtraction?