ROEMER: We must embrace people of faith in this party. We must talk about the values of the rural communities and not give up on any voter in any neighborhood on any doorstep.

(END VIDEO CLIP)(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: The Democratic Party has set out on another round of soul-searching since election day, trying to figure out what went wrong and what they need to do to win again. And the focus of that debate right now is the race to pick a new party chairman. Several of the likely candidates spoke in Atlanta yesterday, including Howard Dean.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD DEAN (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's important for us to talk about our faith. It's also important for us not to change our faith.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Another man who's been looking closely at the race is former congressman and 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer, and he joins us now.

And I know you've been looking at this race for a few weeks now. Are you ready to get in?

ROEMER: I am, George. I'm running to win, so that our Democratic Party can win. You look at the past election. The Democratic Party lost 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in the United States. We have four senators, Democrat senators, left in the Deep South. We lost ground with Hispanic voters, churchgoing African-American voters. Catholic voters were a turnaround from 2 percent for Vice President Gore to a net loss of 4 percent in this past election, with a practicing Catholic at the head of our ticket. We need a debate, a conversation, not just for the heart and soul of our party, but for the brains of our party...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But let me...

ROEMER: ... so we think about issues differently, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's have that conversation. What went wrong?

ROEMER: I think a lot of things went wrong. First of all, we're getting -- while we worked hard, we did a lot right in modernizing parties and updating technology and voter lists, we didn't have some of the people that are in your neighborhood talking to you, especially in some of these fast-growing subdivisions in the suburbs. Instead of going to the churches and talking to people, instead of going to the baseball games, where I spent half my life on weekends, Democratic Parties evacuated those areas. As Churchill said, you don't win wars by evacuation. You can test the Republicans for votes everywhere in this country. I didn't go to Atlanta, George, to try to oppose a candidate that's running, but propose new ideas. I didn't go to divide my party on controversial issues, I went to try to unite it with a new conversation for this great Democratic Party.

And I'm not going to try to let people steer this party left, nor would I steer it right. It needs to be bigger, George. We need more Democrats on the bus, more connection to the values of the American people that our party hold dears. And we need to express those values better.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But how do you get that? You talked about a lot of process changes. You said you need to change to get out the vote effort, make it more personal. But does the party also need to have a different ideological orientation?

ROEMER: I think we need to have a bigger bus. We need to not change the principles we stand for. But if my faith is important to me, and it is, I wouldn't be in politics without my faith. I had a great-aunt that was a Catholic nun that used to say, You're going to grow up to be a priest, but if you don't, get into politics so you can help people, especially the poor. It's important for Democrats that feel their faith to be able to talk about it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But John Kerry talked about it...

ROEMER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) during the campaign. When you go into most of America, George, and you talk to most of America, a lot of people do not feel that we are a party of being able to express our faith to communicate values of faith. Not just on issues such as abortion, but on issues such as our concern for the poor. One of the most important things for me as a Democrat is, how do we reach out more effectively to help the least of our brethren? That's what Jesus said to us. What do we do on welfare reform? I worked very closely with the Clinton administration on welfare reform to try to reward work and get part -- people off of welfare. A lot of people now are working hard in this country, one in two jobs. But they're still in poverty. Why can't we reward work now and pay people a decent wage? That is a value.

A value of national security. The war on terrorism, the war in Iraq, the war in -- now to try to rebuild parts of Indonesia and do it, as the 9/11 commission might have said, with education and economic aid, economic trade, those are things we have to look at for our national security, not just going out, as the Bush administration does, and think it's all about the military part. It is, we've got to find terrorists and kill them, but we also have to look at the other myriad powers within the United States and public diplomacy and helping people around the world and competing with the (inaudible) and education.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've said the party...

ROEMER: We need national security in tougher, smarter, more effective terms, like Truman and Kennedy talked about.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me. You said that the party has to expand the bus, but you also have to energize that base, the liberal, progressive base of the party. And a lot of that base is going to be taking their cues from these Web logs, the blogs that are, you know, engaged in this debate. And I want to show you some of the issues they've been raising and give you a chance to respond. The first one comes from Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo.com. He has looked at your record and says, here's a guy who voted against the Clinton economic plan in 1993 and for the Bush economic plan in 2001. And here's what he said. "I just cannot understand how someone with those votes and that overarching position can be the titular head of the Democratic Party. It just doesn't make sense."

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why should Democrats pick someone who was against the party on these core issues?

ROEMER: The '93 vote, George, was a vote that -- I thought that the party did not need to raise taxes, that there were other alternatives for us on the spending side, that there were other more moderate and conservative Democratic proposals that were out there that would have still made some of the tough choices.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you still think it was the right vote?

ROEMER: I still think it was the right vote. I worked with the Clinton administration all the way through the Clinton years with president Clinton, with the chiefs of staff, Erskine Bowles and Leon Panetta and John Podesta on building education and increasing funding for children on Headstart programs and education flexibility. I worked on a balanced budget with the Clinton administration. I worked with people such as Nancy Pelosi on intelligence and national security issues, when she was a member of the Intelligence Committee. Nobody is questioning Nancy Pelosi's Democratic credentials, and she was one of the people encouraging me to get into this race.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me go to another issue because -- it looks like the big issue on the domestic agenda this time around is going to be Social Security reform, and others have looked at your votes there and they've particularly -- they take out one called Filner amendment in 2001. It was a vote to block any funding for implementing the recommendations of President Bush's Social Security commission. You voted against that. That's been interpreted as a vote supporting some sort of private accounts. And here's what Chris Bowers of mydd.com said, "Unless Roemer publicly, loudly and completely repudiates his recent position on Social Security, he is utterly unacceptable as DNC chair. Mark my words. If Roemer becomes chair without doing this, I will actively encourage all progressive activists to donate and volunteer to third party groups instead of, and at the expense of, the DNC." Will you repudiate that vote?

ROEMER: Publicly and loudly, I will explain what that vote was. That vote was not anything about Social Security. It was simply giving the money to propose -- to let the study come forward, George. The bloggers -- the Internet is a very, very useful tool for us to communicate with voters, ideas. I'm very excited about it. But it can also misinterpret a vote.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're not for President Bush's plan?

ROEMER: I think, George, that when we talk about national security and Social Security, Democrats need to articulate our differences with President Bush. And these are two areas for us to make great grounds, both on the national security side, where I was on the 9/11 Commission, where we're not making good progress on the war on terror and on Social Security. I think the president is trying to dismantle our safety net on social security, trying to take away one of the three legs of the stable stool where he's claiming the sky is falling. We all know from the actuarial tables there's no harm done to Social Security for 35 years.

What's his plan? What's the hurry? Why is proposing cutting benefits potentially by a third and a half? Shouldn't we be balancing the budget before he spends $2 trillion of our payroll taxes on a private system that gambles the savings of our senior citizens? I don't think the president's plan is wisely thought through, and I think the Republicans are even going to propose that this thing be put back.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So it sounds like you're against it.

ROEMER: I am not for the president's plan, and I think I want to make sure that those bloggers understand that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, the issue of abortion. You've said you're pro-life, and a lot of choice activists say that your record is against their interests. And it's been a record anti-choice, and one final blogger Kevin Drum of washingtonmonthly.com says, "You either believe in a right to choose or your don't. I don't see how you can tap dance around a core principle like that." Your response?

ROEMER: My response is when I was in Atlanta the past couple of days and would talk about this issue -- first of all, I think our party needs to be more inclusive, George. George Bush, when he travels around the country campaigning for re-election in the last month of the campaign, who is he seen with?

Well, he wasn't seen with Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. He was seen with Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger: two people that don't have the same views as him on abortion. I'm not asking to rewrite the platform. We have a majority of our party, an overwhelming majority of our party, that is pro-choice, and I respect that. But I think we should not only be more inclusive on this issue, especially in the Midwest and the south if a candidate has those view, we should have them in our party.

ROEMER: We should also have a conversation about this. Anna Quindlen, who I believe is a lifetime Democrat and pro-choice person, writes for Newsweek magazine, very respected writer, said in a Newsweek article about a month and a half ago, that the Democrats need to have a dialog on this issue.

I was very encouraged the last couple days when I talked to members of the DNC, who said to me, "Tim, we need to think about this issue. We need to talk about this issue." Nobody wants to be in a position of having an unwanted pregnancy. How do we try to prevent that situation? How do we try -- in the Clinton years, when I worked with them, to reduce the abortion rate by 11 percent through counseling, economic security. All I want to do is have a conversation in my party and broaden that tent, not rewrite...

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that conversation has begun today.

ROEMER: ... the (inaudible) platform. Thank you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Carson Roemer, thank you very much.

ROEMER: Great to be with you, George.