Nader's New Base: Republicans?

W A S H I N G T O N, June 12 -- Ralph Nader is perhaps the country's single most successful progressive policy entrepreneur and activist.

On the other side of the conventional Washington divide, the less famous, but perhaps as influential, conservative Grover Norquist holds sway over his famous "Wednesday Meetings," where the capital's most powerful Republican groups wage war, trying to deconstruct nearly every piece of legislation Nader has pushed Congress to pass over the years.

Nader and Norquist are in many ways the yin and yang of America's Beltway ideological battles.

Civility, a sense of irony, and a bit of mischievousness helped convince Norquist to invite Nader to his meeting this week. Nader took full advantage, urging some of those conservatives to rethink their fundamental political beliefs and reclaim the Republican Party from the grip of corporate interests.

Waiting His Turn

Nader arrived at Norquist's downtown Washington offices 10 minutes early and took a seat at the mahogany table around which the weekly activist meetings are held. He shook a few hands. The younger conservatives in the crowd, less inured to Nader's superstardom, just stared.

For an hour and a half, Nader waited as 20 speakers, representing Republican policy staffs, anti-regulation groups, family-policy organizations and political candidates updated each other on their respective contributions to the fight against liberalism, taxes and bureaucracy.

Most proceeded as if an ideological arch-nemesis was not there, listening, nodding, and arching an occasional eyebrow. (One regular meeting-goer, the American Land Rights Association's Mike Hardiman, casually referred to a group Nader founded as "spoiled suburbanites." Nader smiled wanly.)

When it was Nader's turn to speak, he took on the basic assumptions of his audience.

"Some of it is arguable, some of it is not so bad," he said of what he had just heard. "But the thrust is, strengthen the oligarchy, and strengthen the concentration of power."