For years, the right wing of the Republican Party has asked its candidates to take socially extreme positions that are outside the mainstream. For the most part, those candidates took those positions, but once elected they only paid lip service to them. Some of that changed after the 2004 elections. They said, hold it: We control the White House, the Congress, the courts, the majority of the statehouses. Why aren't we getting our due? So now the right wing is asking for its pound of flesh -- on Terri Schiavo, stem cells, and a whole new series of litmus tests. Combine these actions with a failed fiscal policy and America's damaged reputation in the world, and that means a whole lot of moderate Republicans who consider themselves part of that sensible center are looking for a home. We Democrats can bring them back.

...How do we do that? We start by simply telling the truth; by being straight with people on issues from fiscal matters to America's role in the world. We do it by recognizing that in 2005, the issues in this country are no longer left versus right or liberal versus conservative; they are about the future versus the past. The Democratic Party has always been at its best when we've looked to the future. It's been our heritage. Roosevelt led us through the Depression and the Second World War. Kennedy challenged us to put a man on the moon. Clinton led us through the greatest economic expansion in American history. That is our Democratic record. We've done it before and we can do it again.

Sensible solutions. It's that legacy that inspired me. I came into office after a winning campaign that included a lot of folks in rural Virginia who hadn't voted Democrat in a long time. I've had some success in governing Virginia because we've focused on sensible solutions that look to that future.

When I was elected following a Republican governor, we first of all had to get our fiscal house in order. Virginia was a state in the red. My predecessor, who had been the chairman of the Republican National Committee, left me a budget shortfall six times greater than he publicly stated.

But we also used that crisis as a chance to totally reform Virginia state government.

We then went about reforming our tax code with a Republican legislature. That allowed us to make historic new investments in education, the key to our future. We kept the focus on making our academics more rigorous, and we made sure that those new dollars were held accountable in how they were spent in our schools.

Virginia today has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the whole country. Virginia has a booming economy. And after a two-year independent study by Governing magazine, Virginia was named the best-managed state in the country.