The first day of the Republican National Convention was themed “A Nation of Courage,” but a look at the lineup of speakers revealed the real story to be “The Revenge of the Centrists.”

The religious right is nowhere in sight, bowing out and biding its time in the hope of a return to influence and the oft-promised run at Roe v. Wade in a second term with three likely Supreme Court vacancies. But look a little deeper and you’ll see that the list of likely wrestlers for the Republican nomination in 2008 are almost all centrists – hawks on the war on terrorism as well as fiscal conservatives, but moderates on hot-button social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the environment. The list includes Mayor Giuliani, Senator Mc-Cain, Governor Pataki, Governor Romney, Senator Hagel, and even Governor Bush of Florida. This is still unmistakably George W. Bush’s party, but the Texas line dancing is being done in Rudy Giuliani’s New York.

For all the talk of a deeply divided nation, here’s a surprising statistic: The five states that voted most strongly for Vice President Gore in the last election – California, New York, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island – all now have Republican governors. The challenge to the entrenched Democratic establishment on the ground is unmistakable. Voters in the heart of so-called blue-state America are willing to turn over the reins to responsible Republicans as long as they are reformers untainted by association with the religious right.

This points to festering fault lines within the Republican Party that cannot remain unresolved. There is a libertarian strain that runs through the core Republican message of less government and more individual freedom. This is the logic that prompted Mr. Giuliani to defend his pro-choice position on abortion rights as “more consistent with the philosophy of the Republican Party…more opportunity for people to make their own choices rather than government dictating those choices.” It’s what led Vice President Cheney to split with his administration for reasons of family loyalty on the issue of gay rights, saying, “We live in a free society; and freedom means freedom for everybody.”

The bottom-line big idea for the Republican Party is freedom – that’s a bedrock message that resonates with Americans across party lines. The religious right’s political agenda is seen as being intolerant of difference, a theological absolutism that cannot accommodate that plurality of opinions that inevitably springs from individual freedom. It’s this association with intolerance that holds back the Republican Party.

An incumbent Republican president during wartime should be cruising to re-election, but the electorate remains divided because of the Bush administration’s courtship of the right at the expense of the center. Polls show that the majority of voters consider themselves moderate, but they see the parties as being dominated by extremist special interests on the left and right. That’s why “independent” is the fastest growing registration across the nation. The Republicans are putting forward their centrist marquee of stars to answer this discontent, offering strong independent voices with a demonstrated ability to appeal across the spectrum. Mr. McCain, Mr. Giuliani, and Governor Schwarzenegger have been the targets of past right-wing attacks, but all three are now recognized as the saviors of their party in this election and the next.

The Democrats, with their vacationing candidate and incredible shrinking vice-presidential nominee, have been fading in comparison. Their stable of popular stars is nowhere near as deep, and their party is overdue for a conversation about the bedrock big idea on which they agree. Bush-hating is not enough. What’s more, the organized chaos promised by the protesters over the next week threatens to alienate the moderate majority in swing states. Extremists are always their own side’s worst enemy.

This is a lesson the Republicans seem to have learned, even for their win-at-all-costs election-year off-Broadway debut. But there remains a credibility gap that cannot be papered over with billboards and bumper stickers. Dig slightly beneath the veneer of convention consensus and you’ll find a party that has squandered its legacy of fiscal responsibility by spending like drunken sailors. Again, it is the centrists of the party that can show the way – as Mr. McCain and his mod squad of Senators Snowe, Collins, and Chafee have done by standing up to irresponsible spending plans with the insistence that government follow a rule of “pay as you go.”

Realignment in American politics is inevitable. The parties have been slow to adjust their industrial-age political calculations to the realities of the information age. But the existing ideological incoherence cannot be sustained indefinitely. With their unconventional convention lineup, the Republicans are looking toward realignment, but looking alone is not enough. They need to make tough decisions and take action. By re-associating the party with the fundamental principles of freedom and fiscal responsibility, they may lose a few extremist special interests, but they can gain a nation for the next generation.