From today's Houston Chronicle, "With GOP, what you see not necessarily what you get":

If the Federal Trade Commission happens to watch the Republican National Convention, it may be moved to take action against the quadrennial political show. It will be a classic case of bait-and-switch.

On display will be virtually every major figure in the party who supports abortion rights, gay rights, embryonic stem-cell research or even gun control. But then the party will renominate a president who is for little, if any, of that.

It will be the same George W. Bush who four years ago, at a similarly arch display in Philadelphia, trumpeted himself as a "compassionate conservative" then produced the most hard-right administration in years and record federal deficits.

Given the promise of 2000 and the performance of the past four years, it's amazing chutzpah, even for New York, even for Madison Square Garden. The Bush campaign counts heavily on Americans' incredibly short political memories.

The need for Republicans to take this approach is clear, but if you need some reinforcing data, look no further than the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll.

The Bush policies that have cemented his position with the unshakable right, the heart of the Republican base, leave him vulnerable and unconvincing to centrist voters who may decide the election.

This may be one reason that Bush's narrow lead nationally in the survey, 47-45 percent, disappears in 17 closely contested states, where the Journal-NBC poll found John Kerry 4 percentage points up.

What to do, in terms of its quadrennial convention, has been obvious to Republican planners for months: Put on a prime-time festival of moderation, featuring, in key speaking roles, party leaders who are as left as they come, which is, of course, not very left at all.

The leading quartet is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Gov. George Pataki of New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani.

It's Karl Rove dealing a game of three-card monte on Seventh Avenue.

"An unfortunate charade, a masquerade ball," Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of NARAL-Pro Choice America, said as the Republican platform committee turned aside muted efforts from within the party to soften its call for a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion.

Professional Republicans approach this, uh, dichotomy in several ways.

Elected officials, such as Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a long-time party strategist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, are magnanimous with the more moderate elements of the party, which they can be because their side has many more votes.

"They represent millions of Republicans," Barbour said of social moderates. "They're just as good a Republican as I am."

Representatives of more doctrinaire factions are dismissive.

"They're noisy and ineffective," said Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union.

"They show up and they complain. The fact is that the vast majority of Republicans are pro-life, and that's why they prevail."

Supporters of abortion rights within the party "are swimming against the tide," Lessner said.

Cavendish dared the party to feature its antiabortion position during the convention.

Feeling that it is a losing position for Republicans in general if fully aired, she urged the party to "talk about it in prime time," not just in a platform that, if the past is a guide, will be debated briefly, if at all, and passed before the major networks tune in for their brief bit of coverage.

That would change nothing within the party, Lessner said, again accentuating the powerlessness of moderates to affect GOP policy.

"Any prospect they have to become the majority view within the party is so remote as to be out of view," Lessner said.

Phyllis Schlafly, veteran conservative campaigner, said she was happy as long as the moderates' "views are not reflected in the platform."

"They are getting all the prime time," Schlafly said, but Pataki, Bloomberg and Giuliani are convention hosts, she conceded, so "we kind of have to be courteous."