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Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and now a columnist for The Washington Post, has long been one of the leading voices of “compassionate conservatism.”  His 2008 book, “Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals,” was one of those that most influence my political thinking.

In his most recent column for the Post, Gerson argues that if the Republican Party, which is in a position to make huge gains in the 2010 election, embraces the tea party movement and radical libertarianism, it “rides a massive wave toward a rocky shore.”

“A party that is intimidated and silent in the face of its extremes is eventually defined by them,” he warns.

In the July 9 column, Gerson notes that President Barack Obama’s once high approval rating has fallen to below 40 percent, in part, because he “mistook his election as a mandate for the pent-up liberalism of his party.” Now some Republican activists are about to make a similar, but even worse mistake, he says.

He gives the example of Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who quotes Thomas Jefferson’s radical views favoring violent, French-style revolution, and advocating “Second Amendment remedies” to deal with a Congress she sees as tyrannical. This is hardly conservative in the usual sense of the word.

Gerson, whose grandfather was a Nazarene preacher in Kentucky, also brings up the candidacy of Rand Paul, whose contact with the media has been minimal since he suggested that property rights should trump basic human rights. His campaign’s fear is not that he will make mistakes, but that he will simply reveal his true political views, he says.

The columnist makes the case that libertarianism is not only not real conservatism, but is “a scandal.” It is, he points out, a “retreat from the most basic social commitments to the weak, the elderly and the disadvantaged, along with a withdrawal from American global commitments.”

This view is similar to one I expressed in one of my columns during the May primary election, “Will the real Republican Party please stand up,” which garnered public anger from some tea party advocates but private gratitude from some true conservatives.

I agree with Gerson that Republicans are positioned  to win a landslide in November. But that could be the worst thing that could happen to the party in the long run, because if they make the same mistake Newt Gingrich did in 1994 and see their victory as a mandate for revolution, there will be a backlash.

The United States is neither a conservative nor a liberal nation. It is a moderate, centrist one, and until our political representatives understand that fact, we will continue to have a bipolar political system with violent lurches from one side to the other, bitter partisanship and gridlock, which only increases the electorate’s anger over their leaders’ inability to compromise in order to solve real problems.