In first big speech, former Sen. Coleman praises "center right"

In an address at Harvard University, former Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman delivered a message that, if you strip away the geek factor, could have been a stump speech.

Coleman, who lost his Senate seat to Democrat Al Franken after a near marathon battle this year and has said he hasn't decided if he will run for governor next year, pitched the generally uncontroversial message that Americans are looking for a moderate tone but bold vision.

"America is a center right nation today as it has been for generations," he said in his first big public speech since losing his seat this summer. Coleman is a visiting fellow at Harvard this week.

The former Senator, who showed no signs of the bout of Bell's palsy he revealed he had two months ago, said Republicans must embrace their moderate members and suggested that politicians must avoid allowing the controversial social issues to block progress.

"We also must strive as Americans not to let the debate over our values so damage our unity that our ability to achieve consensus on difficult and pressing issues like health care, social security and national security is destroyed," he said.

Coleman, during questioning that followed, did wade into a few more controversial issues.

While he said he'd like to concentrate more on bread and butter issues than social issues, he suggested for apparently the first time that he may be open to allowing gay couples to create civil unions. In the Senate, he supported a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

"That doesn't mean that civil unions don't take place. It doesn't mean that you can't find ways that have relationships. But there is something about the definition of marriage," he said. "I want gay Americans, I want them in the Republican Party. That's important to me. Part of the coalition.."

The former Senator said anti-Obama "birthers" or those who use Nazi-images in rallies are not central to his party.

"I think those other things are external," he said.

He also offered some praise for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota.

"Michele Bachmann -- she is out there articulating those things that she believes, protesting things that she thinks weaken this country, supporting those things that she believes strengthen this country. I have no doubt she is going to get re-elected by her constituents," he said.

"We were very confident of victory in October, we thought the race was over," Coleman said. "But for the collapse of the economy, I don't the race would have been close."

Coleman, who lost his seat by 312 votes, claimed to have won more votes on election night.

"I'll say it up front, I got more votes election night. I got more votes when the machines were counted. In the end, through the election process, more absentee ballots were counted for the other guy than for me," he said.

It is true that before the recount, recorded votes showed Coleman ahead. After the recount but before absentee ballots were counted, in fact, showed Franken with a narrow 49-vote lead. That lead expanded after previously rejected absentee ballots were folded into the count during the recount and a court case.

With all that behind him and some support from Republicans in a poll, is Coleman ready to run statewide again in a 2010 gubernatorial race? He's still not saying.