"Never Trumpers," don't make donkeys of yourselves
Yesterday I made an exception. I decided that I needed a new photo and header, and while I was there I spent considerable time in a conversation with my fellow "Never Trumpers," as well as your odd Democrat and Trump loyalist. And while I was there, I discovered something that startled me and which I find a bit concerning.
I have been operating on the assumption that opposition to the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump from conservatives and erstwhile Republicans in 2020 would take the form of a third-party candidacy, as it did in 2016. If you recall, Bill Kristol spent considerable time trying to find a traditional, decent conservative to run as a third-party candidate last time out when the erratic, authoritarian, extreme, self-obsessed, and wholly unacceptable Donald Trump unexpectedly became the Republican nominee. It was something many of us had been unprepared for. People like Mitt Romney (whom the polls indicated might actually have won the election), former Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, future Trump Defense Secretary James Mattis, and finally columnist and constitutional lawyer David French were all courted, but all declined to make the race. Finally, former CIA operative and House Republican Caucus policy advisor Evan McMullin came forward, obscure as he was, and ran an honorable campaign in which I think he clearly demonstrated to those few of us who were paying attention that he not only was well-qualified to be president but would have made a better one than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
But he got a late start, he had to build an organization from scratch, and despite a brief flurry of excitement over the remote possibility that he might actually his home state of Utah, he finally got only one-half of one percent of the vote. If he had carried Utah, he could have denied both major party candidates a majority in the Electoral College and thrown the election into the House. There, having finished third in electoral votes, he would have been mandated by the Constitution to be a third option from which the members might choose along with the two major party candidates.
In retrospect, the idea that patriotic and well-informed Republican House members might put the country ahead of their party and reject Mr. Trump in favor of a more responsible choice was probably a pipe dream anyway. But although McMullin did give me and other Republicans who couldn't stomach Donald Trump somebody to vote for instead of just leaving us to sit at home on Election Day, his late start and limited resources meant that he failed to even get on the ballot in enough states to have even theoretically been able to win the election. Most of the national polls didn't even include him for that reason.
Most Republicans either came to terms with it and voted for Mr. Trump or got on board after the election. I've made no secret of how dismayed I am by that. The conservative journalists and political leaders I've admired for years are, in most cases, better than that. While I have to believe that they somehow came to terms with their own consciences in making the decision to "get aboard the Trump Train," as the saying went, I frankly don't see how.
In any case, I believe that the takeover of the Republican party by Mr. Trump's base has inevitable, dire and long-lasting consequences. Having effectively seized control of the Republican party, the alt-right isn't going to let go very easily, and it certainly isn't going to just leave. Even if Mr. Trump is re-elected and then leaves office in 2024, the Republican brand has been permanently changed. The racism, the anti-Semitism, and general kookiness with which Mr. Trump has always been willing to flirt and which dominates his base is now a permanent part of its DNA. Even if the 2024 nominee is a better man (or woman) than Donald Trump (and he- or she- undoubtedly will be), I find it hard to imagine that Mr. Trump's successor at the head of the party will be strong enough and determined enough to cleanse the party's "brand" and conduct the necessary purge of the Nazis and Klan-sympathizers and authoritarians and kooks who make up the president's core constituency. The ease with which the Republican party has embraced Donald Trump has not only dismayed but disillusioned me. The people Hillary Clinton righty called "deplorables" will be a powerful part of the Republican party going forward even if the party never again nominates an aberration like Donald Trump.
But a remnant remains. Somehow, a small core of traditional Republicans continues within the party to oppose the insanity quietly- and quite ineffectively. There is talk of Gov. Hogan of Maryland or former Gov. Kasich of Ohio challenging the president for the nomination in 2020. Former Gov. Weld of Massachusetts, who now lives in New York, has already announced plans to do so. But he, of course, is a full-fledged liberal (or libertarian, which in terms of social issues tends to amount to the same thing), and it's hard to see how he would be much of an improvement on the Democrats.
Macht nichts, as my grandmother would say. The Republican party as a whole has gone over to Trump hook, line, and sinker. Long-time free-traders are now protectionists, firm believers in a strong America providing firm leadership to the Free World have become newly-hatched isolationists, and somehow the traditional conservative reverence for the Constitution has come to make an exception for the Bill of Rights.
Most ominous of all is the nativism. The Republican party has morphed into the Know-Nothings. The open heart and generous spirit of the Lincolns and Teddy Roosevelts and Eisenhowers and Fords and Reagans and Bushes have been exchanged for a cramped and narrow suspicion of anybody who is different. The GOP has become a party in which I no longer have- or want- a place. That Bill Weld will be totally ineffective is a given; unfortunately, as things stand, the same would be true of Gov. Hogan or Gov. Kasich. Either of them - or any other challenger to Mr. Trump- would be obliterated in the Iowa Caucuses. Either might conceivably have a shot among the stubborn, contrary, and traditional Republicans of New Hampshire. But after that, it's hard to think of many states in which the president wouldn't wipe the floor with either of them.
The Republican party is beyond being taken back to its traditional values by a counter-revolution in 2020, It just isn't going to happen. For Donald Trump to be denied renomination would be the one thing that could still save the Republican party. But it's more likely that pigs- or elephants- will fly.
There might be one other possibility, one final chance. If the president were to be buried in a Democratic landslide, the effect might in some ways be similar to what happened after the Goldwater misadventure in 1964. It's possible that the racists and the nativists and the authoritarians might fall into sudden disrepute and the party revert to its traditional posture. The crazies might even be read out of the party entirely.
But it's very unlikely. They would remain a potent force even following a Trump debacle, and the resurgence of the more decent and respectable-though still extreme- conservatives like those in the Tea Party movement would likely continue behind Mike Pence or someone similar. That would mean a Republican party infinitely better than what we have now. Mike Pence and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are far to my right. I didn't think so back in 2016, but in retrospect, I would probably have finally voted for Cruz or Paul if one of them had been nominated instead of Trump. I wouldn't have been happy about it, but with the alternative of Hillary Clinton I would have probably ended up biting the bullet. They would have remained-barely- on right side of the line of utter unacceptability I was compelled to draw in the sand against both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
But I wouldn't feel at home in a party dominated by the Tea Party and their ilk. No, I'm afraid the Republican party has seen the last of me. With a Democratic party at least as extreme and crazy as the Republicans- and one that has been that way for half a century longer- as the only alternative, it seems as clear as crystal to me that America's only hope is in a third, centrist party that can aim to reunite our polarized nation and heal the divisions which are threatening to destroy it.
There is where I place my hopes. Perhaps Gov. Kasich will lead such a movement. Perhaps Gov. Hogan will. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado passes for a moderate among the Democrats. But he is an absolutist on the subject of abortion on demand and as radical as many other social issues as other Democrats, and it is as a Democrat that he has decided to run.
And he has as much chance of being the Democratic nominee as Larry Hogan has of defeating President Trump. Despite his front-runner status in the polls, the other candidate being touted as a Democratic "moderate" (presumably by comparison to the other Democratic candidates), former Vice-President Joe Biden, has his work cut out for him because the rank-and-file of the party has become so rabid. Either of these gentlemen would, in my view, be a more formidable opponent for President Trump than any of the other, more blatantly extreme Democrats. As I've mentioned before, I think that the Democrats may just wind up nominating Biden anyway because they want so badly to defeat Mr. Trump. But given the ideologically rabid character of the Democratic base, that's anything but assured.
There is even a movement to draft a pro-life Democrat or at least non-absolutist on abortion to join the fray. I could get behind somebody like Sen. Casey of Pennsylvania, for example. But he knows full well that he only holds his seat in the Senate on sufferance and could be purged quite easily by the abortion extremists if he misbehaved. And there is no chance of anyone who does not support a virtually unlimited right to abort even in the third trimester could ever be nominated by the Democrats.
No, it looks to me like it would have to be an independent candidate. Kasich, perhaps. Or Hogan. Or (although he'll never do it) Mitt Romney, the one candidate who might actually have a shot at winning. Given the eagerness of Trump loyalists to purge principled conservatives like former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona or Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, maybe one of them might make the run. Or maybe McMullin or someone similarly obscure might try again- hopefully, this time earlier in the game and with enough time in which to organize, raise a war chest, and actually get on the ballot throughout the nation.
I'm game. What I'm looking for is a voice, a place to stand. New parties rarely elect presidents the first time out. It seems to me that actually winning in 2020 is less important than setting the stage to win in 2024 or beyond, or at least to nudge the other two parties toward the center in a way that simply siding with either this time out has no chance of doing. The critical thing, it seems to me, is to begin laying the groundwork for a future in which a centrist alternative to two extreme major parties is available one way or another.
That is an absolute necessity if our democracy and perhaps our civilization is going to survive. Movements like the Centrist Project offer hope that more and more of the independents who represent a strong plurality of American voters may be coming to understand that we need to be looking outside the two traditional parties if we're going to find sensible candidates who are going to lead rather than being led, and unite rather than divide.
Even the Republicans, the last victorious American "third party," needed to lose in 1856 with John Fremont before electing Abe Lincoln in 1860. I'm willing that 2020 be 1856 for the new party which America needs so desperately if it comes to that. By all means, a new party should strive to win. But simply being born and giving Americans a responsible third option would itself be a victory. Even in defeat, having survived the birth pangs a new party can put itself into a position to compete against the clowns to the left of us and jokers to the right in 2024.
Which brings me back to my visit to Twitter yesterday. It seems that sentiment is running strong- or at least vocal- among the remnants of the McMullin movement to forego an independent or third-party candidacy in 2020 in favor of at least temporarily joining the Democratic party and attempting to influence it to nominate as moderate a possible a candidate next year.
Yeah. Right.
Let me make this clear: if there is no acceptable third candidate and Biden or Hickenlooper is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him. I do not even reject the possibility that I might vote for someone further to the left if that's the only way I have of rejecting Donald Trump at the polls. I agree with my erstwhile colleagues in the McMullin campaign that getting Donald Trump out of the White House needs to be our number one priority. Now that the Supreme Court has a clear, if precarious, conservative majority (a real one, as opposed the faux conservative majority the mainstream media used to talk about, which included the socially liberal Justice Kennedy), the permanent damage a liberal Democrat could do in the White House over the next four years is probably minimal.
Yeah, I'd vote for Biden or Hickenlooper and hope against hope that a chastened Republican party might somehow offer me a place to stand again in 2024, and that enough of the McMullin movement remains to offer the nation the centrist alternative it so desperately needs. Although I'd have a hard time doing it, I don't even take voting for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or another of the even more extreme extremists completely off the table. But three things need to be very clear in our minds.
The first is that if we Never Trumpers become Democrats, even temporarily, there are not enough of us to nudge the Democratic party toward the center. The Democrats will nominate the same person whether we help them do it or not. Their platform will be just as extreme whether we participate in the process or not. True, it's possible that we could make the difference between victory or defeat for Donald Trump- although I doubt it; I expect Mr. Trump to go down hard in any case. And yes, voting Democratic in November is an option if there is no better one. But if we react to the Trump presidency by joining the Democrats, our impact on the Democratic party will be zilch. Zero. Nada. We would be even more irrelevant as Democrats than as Republicans.
There is no upside to simply joining the Democrats. None. Even trying to work within the GOP would make more sense.
Vote for the Democrat in November, sure- if no nascent third party comes provides an option. I'd probably do that myself. For the nation's sake, Trump must go for many reasons, and if he is re-elected the Republican party is done for as an organ of sane, responsible government. That in itself would be a bad thing for America whether I personally could ever be at home in it again or not. But unless some sort of life-boat has come into existence in the form of a new party in the meantime we Never Trumpers will simply remain as ineffectual and irrelevant as we've been ever since Donald Trump was nominated in Cleveland. Only this time, that status will likely be permanent. Once again, we would be, if anything, even more powerless and ineffectual in the Democratic party than we would be in the Republican.
And if, as I expect, a Democrat is elected, actual centrists will still have no home in the Republican party. That boat had probably already sailed in 2016, before the electoral fluke which caused the Trump nomination took place. The more conservative "Never Trumpers" might well feel at home in the party of Pence and Cruz and even Rand Paul. And it's possible that the rest of us might be able to make some sort of peace with the new state of affairs ourselves. Pence and Cruz, after all, are decent, honorable, and capable men in a way that Donald Trump is simply not. They are men of principle, even if they have temporarily lost contact with their principles, and even if we don't necessarily agree with all their principles. But the Trump wing of the party- the nativists, the authoritarians, the isolationists, the protectionists, the conspiracy theorists, the alt-right- will remain very much a part of the mix even if Trump loses, and a potent and vocal part at that. And the one thing our nation so desperately needs- a calming, moderating voice to call us together and help us embrace what we have in common instead of fixating on what divides us- will still be missing.
There is no possible outcome of the 2020 election that will return the Republican party to the days of Romney and McCain and the Bushes and Gerald Ford. Most Republicans, in fact, probably regard that as a good thing. The nomination of a true centrist by the GOP had probably become an impossibility by the time of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses met. If it hadn't been Trump, I'm certain that it would have been Cruz.
But now, there is no possible outcome of the 2020 election that will give the Romneys and McCains and Bushes and Fords even a significant voice in the Republican party. In any conceivable scenario, the Republican party will remain one of the two extremes in a bitterly polarized nation in which neither party will give true centrists a voice.
Finally, the likelihood that a third party would lose in 2020 isn't as strong an argument as it seems. There is plenty of historical evidence that third parties can significantly impact the political process even if they never win a single election or a single electoral vote. Democrats complain- and not without reason- that if Jill Stein's Green Party votes had gone to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Hillary would be president today. In 2000, if Ralph Nader hadn't been on the ballot Al Gore might well have beaten George W. Bush in the Electoral College. While Ross Perot's candidacy in 1992 probably didn't alter the outcome of the 1992 election, his candidacy gave voice to a populist movement in American politics which finally came to a much more malignant head in the Trump candidacy. The split between William Howard Taft's Republicans and Teddy Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" progressives elected Woodrow Wilson in 1912,
Politics is a Darwinian business. Winning means survival to politicians. For a group to exhibit substantial political muscle even in losing cause inevitably influences the major parties to seek to incorporate that group into its coalition. The "Never Trump" movement can influence neither the 2020 nomination nor the direction of either party by operating within it. But a strong enough showing by a third party even if it fails to win a single electoral vote can be a show of strength which could do in the long run what caucusing with the Democrats and voting in their primaries in 2020 or waiting for 2024 and trying again in the Republican party cannot: actually nudge one or both of the major parties back toward the center.
According to a Gallup poll last month, 44% of registered voters in the United States are independents, compared with 27% who are Republicans and 26% who consider themselves Democrats. Do the math. Seldom in our history has voter identification with the two major political parties been lower. All that dissatisfaction will never be channeled into an attempt to nudge either party toward the center; I'm not sure how that could even be attempted. But a third party emphasizing its rejection of the polarization and divisiveness and childish bickering and general ineffectiveness of the two major parties would have a powerful appeal to a constituency significantly larger than either of those parties.
Even in defeat, a third party could give expression to the disgust of the American people with the current state of affairs in a way that would be impossible by working within either of the two existing parties. If the goal is nudging the major parties back toward the center, even an "unsuccessful" third party where "success" is defined in terms of actually winning could not help but have a profound impact on the radical, polarizing character of both the Democrats and the Republicans. If that is the goal, why not adopt the strategy which mathematically and historically holds out the best prospect of influencing events? Why not assert our strength instead of squandering it?
But mark this point well: only a third party can, at this point, work effectively to overcome our division and polarization, because there is no prospect of either party offering an actual voice or even a place to stand to anyone who does not see American politics as a matter of "us against them." And don't expect a centrist third party to ever come into being if it doesn't happen in 2020.
By 2024, the moment will have passed. Whatever the outcome of next year's elections, battle lines will have either hardened or been completely been redrawn once it is over. They will either be redrawn in a way that will allow for national reconciliation and healing and the re-emergence of cooperation and goodwill, or they will harden into an ever more bitter, even more fanatical, and ever more irrational shouting match between the extremes.
Greek has two words for time. Chronos is a time in the sense in which we usually use the word: a second following a second, a minute following a minute, an hour following an hour, a day following a day, a year following a year. A kairos, on the other hand, is a different kind of time: the "right time," the moment in which everything comes together, in which conditions are right, and at which, so to speak, the stars align. In chronos, as Scarlet O'Hara would say, "tomorrow is another day." But a kairos once missed, is gone forever- or at least for a long chronos.
2020 is a kairos. It will be a unique moment in which the aberration of Donald Trump will have disrupted a broken two-party system and paved the way for something new and dynamic and viable and life-giving for our democracy, or else it will be the moment we didn't seize, the chance that was lost, the crossroads at which we chose the wrong path. I fully agree that we as a nation need to repudiate Donald Trump and every ugly, hateful, crude, and un-American thing he stands for. But we need to aim higher than that, or the conditions which produced Donald Trump will simply continue to fester and metastasize like cancer through the body politic, poisoning our public debate, setting us against each other, hardening our differences, and finally making our divisions impossible to heal.
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