Republicans will again put on a kinder and gentler face when they meet this week in New York.

Just as they did in their past two conventions, they’ve given featured speaking slots to so many prominent party moderates that some conservatives are grousing.

Featured speakers include Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who has both campaigned for President Bush and assailed attacks on rival John Kerry’s patriotism, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has kept greater distance from Bush than any other prominent Republican.

Indeed, just as the Democrats sought last month to soft-pedal their liberal side, the GOP speakers’ roster appears designed to play down the more conservative aspects of the party’s agenda.

It’s nothing new. Republicans have done that in every convention since the sharply conservative tone of their 1992 gathering in Houston was seen as a factor in their loss of the presidency.

In 1996, after the GOP takeover of Congress, the convention bypassed conservative congressional leaders and gave featured slots in San Diego to McCain, Gen. Colin Powell and several prominent women, including Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Four years ago in Philadelphia, with Bush and his allies making a concerted effort to reshape the party’s image, Powell and McCain again held featured spots, along with Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice.

There is a certain irony in spotlighting McCain, Schwarzenegger and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a potential 2008 presidential candidate who shares the California governor’s moderate stance on social issues but has emerged as one of the GOP’s most outspoken critics of Kerry.

The president’s strategists have based their campaign strategy on spurring a maximum turnout of Republican voters, especially religious conservatives. That’s where Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are concentrating most of their campaign appearances.

The issues agenda being pursued by Bush and the GOP congressional leadership has featured such conservative mainstays as making tax cuts permanent despite the budget deficit, passing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, tort reform that curbs lawsuits against big companies and speeding the confirmation of conservative judges.

And the role of moderates in party circles has gradually diminished, except in the Senate, where they hold the balance of power.

Still, while the strategy of playing up the moderates and de-emphasizing the conservatives is not new, there is a significant difference between this convention and those of 1996 and 2000.

This is the first GOP convention since 1992 with a Republican in the White House, and the first in 76 years in which the party controls the House, the Senate and the presidency. That means the party’s issues agenda is not only important in judging Bush’s record to date, but it could be even more important in the future since its chances of enactment will likely increase if he wins re-election.

Already, some GOP congressional leaders are talking of adding two more controversial items: a “flat tax” or a national sales tax under which all taxpayers pay the same rate and most deductions would be eliminated, and a Social Security reform measure letting workers put some retirement funds into private accounts.

So far, Bush has been reluctant to talk about these matters. When House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois suggested replacing the current tax system with “either a flat tax, a national sales tax or a value added tax,” Bush said, “It’s the kind of interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously.” But when critics charged that would raise taxes on the middle class, the White House backed off.

And the president has only made vague references to Social Security reform, though he talked about it some in 2000.

Maybe Bush will talk about these subjects this week when he discusses his second-term agenda. But initial indications are that this convention may be long on generalities — the value of tax cuts, education reform and the war on terror — and criticism of John Kerry. And short on the GOP agenda.

— Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.