Is there a future for 'red dog Democrats?'
It has been said that conservatives are always looking for converts, whereas liberals are always looking for heretics.
I know about being both. I've been both a Republican and a Democrat in my time; in fact, I'm one of the probably very few Iowans who has been a delegate to both parties' state conventions (the Democrats in 1984 and the Republicans forty years later). It was the liberal impulse to punish heretics that drove me out of the Democratic Party; in 1990, Tom Miller- the only Democrat with even an outside chance of being elected governor and an orthodox liberal on every issue other than abortion- was denied the nomination for that single lapse. The nomination went instead to an obscure State Senate president who- predictably- lost an election I believe the enormously popular Miller would likely have won.
I took the hint: the Democrats would accept my vote, my contributions, and my work. But because I wasn't sure that the Founders really intended abortion to be a constitutional right, I- like Tom Miller- would always be a second-class citizen in that party.
Miller made his peace with the Democratic Party. He quickly regained the job he gave up to run for governor- Attorney General of Iowa- and he's held the job ever since. Last time out, the Republicans didn't even bother running anybody against him. But he'll never be governor or a U.S. senator. That's ironic because he's unquestionably the most popular Democrat with the general electorate in the forty or so years I've lived in Iowa.
Myself, I began a sojourn in the GOP after Miller's defeat, even serving twice on the County Republican Central Committee. My socially conservative side came to the fore, along with my discomfort with what I saw as the naive streak in the realm of foreign policy I noticed. I was very much a Bush/McCain/Romney kind of Republican. I was always uncomfortable with the Ron Paul crazies and the other marginal types clamoring around the edges. I sensed which way the wind was blowing after Romney lost in 2012, but expected Ted Cruz to be the one who took the party over the cliff and into the zany world of right-wing authoritarianism. Like everybody else, I was blindsided by Donald Trump's more mindless, primitive descent into the politics of the id.
I started off in 2016 as a Jeb Bush supporter. It soon became clear that Jeb(!) wasn't going anywhere. People didn't want another Bush in the White House, and his campaign, at least in Iowa, struck me as hopelessly inept. Ironically, I ended up caucusing for Marco Rubio, the invertebrate senator from Florida who has since then gone full Trump, even to the point of attacking Dr. Fauci's guidance on the COVID pandemic even more savagely and unfairly than the toddler president whose toady Rubio has become.
The degree to which the Republican Party embraced a notoriously corrupt, massively ignorant, hopelessly incompetent clown like Donald Trump and the enthusiasm with which it embraced the nativist authoritarianism he stands for was a deal-breaker for me. I proudly voted for Even McMullin in 2016 and did not hesitate to mark my ballot for Joe Biden this time out. In fact, I voted a straight Democratic ticket, reasoning that an utter and global disaster at the polls was the one thing that could conceivably bring the Republican Party back to its senses.
It didn't happen, of course. And Republicans who are fond of bragging about their allegiance to the Constitution are for the most part all in on a comic opera attempt to subvert a patently fair and lawful election simply because they don't like the outcome. Those I took at their word when they claimed to be "pro-life" treat merely wearing a mask in public and practicing social distancing as an infringement on their rights as if infecting others with a potentially deadly virus was as sacred a hallmark of freedom as free speech and freedom of religion.
Not freedom of the press, of course. That seems to have disappeared from the Constitution at some point after Donald Trump took the oath to support and defend that document, which he apparently has never read and whose implacable enemy he has become.
The Republican Party has, in essence, become a conspiracy against the Constitution, against the rule of law, and against freedom itself. Now, if anything, I've become even less comfortable with the passive foreign policy the Democrats have espoused in recent decades and which people like Mr. Trump and both of the Pauls have embraced. And I have never been a fan of the coercive elements of political correctness. Social reform and the fuller extension of human rights to hitherto marginalized elements of society are good things. My own thinking on several such matters has evolved to some degree, just as the thinking of most Americans has in recent years. Still, the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples, for example, seems to me to have been approached less thoughtfully and more spitefully than it might have been. Democrats, too, have to share the blame for the advent of Donald Trump; had they not been so quick to cry "wolf!" when Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, and even McCain and Romney came along, people might have been inclined to believe those of us who tried to call people's attention to the fact that in Donald Trump, the wolf had actually come.
I have been a heretic among Democrats before, and I am not eager to repeat the experience. At least for the moment, I am content to remain independent, accountable only to my own conscience.
But nonetheless, it's hard to miss the point that battle lines have been drawn for us, even if they aren't where they wish they were. The Republican Party has set its face like flint in opposition to the values this nation has always stood for. I find myself making common cause with the Democrats again, even though I am reluctant to once again number myself among them. People like Steve Schmidt of The Lincoln Project, a long-time Republican strategist for people like John McCain, have become registered Democrats. Tim Miller of The Bulwark has a perspective on our former party, much like mine. He argues that Never Trump ex-Republicans have already become functional Democrats whether we call ourselves such or not. Jonathan Chait thinks that given the fact that the battle lines have been drawn for us, Never Trumpers should, at least for the present, make the Democratic Party our home because it's there that the democratic resistance to the greatest threat our way of life faces has its focus.
The argument has its appeal. Quite a few of my fellow Never Trumpers argue that our place is standing with the Biden wing of the Democratic Party as it resists the coming challenge from the far-left. And as Chait points out, even the AOC/Bernie Sanders wing of the party needs us; its cherished belief to the contrary, there is no great groundswell of buyers for what they are selling. If they are going to achieve any influence on the direction of our national policy at all, as bitter a pill as it may be for them to swallow, they can achieve it only by making common cause with the center.
And it's the center, I'm convinced, where the future of American politics lies. It's hard to see that at times. We are so polarized as a nation that the left and the right's extremes seem to be the only games in town. But despite all the damage Donald Trump has done to this nation- and it is varied and profound- he's also done us one favor: he's reminded us reasonable, thoughtful conservatives and liberals alike that we have more in common with each other than either has with the zanies on their own sides of the ideological fence.
Am I going to end up as what Tim Miller calls a "red dog Democrat?" I don't know. My past experience makes me a little skeptical of the heresy hunters. But somehow, there has to be a place in the church of American democracy in which the boundaries of orthodoxy are not only clearly defined but elastic enough to allow the mind and the conscience to breathe. Somewhere there has to be a place where we can discuss our differences and find common ground instead of trying to destroy each other over them.
I remain a bit skeptical about the Democratic Party being that place. But I'm willing to be wrong. In fact, I'm eager to be proven wrong. I'm not yet willing to call myself a Democrat again. I am not yet convinced that it's a viable course. I still remain convinced that for our democracy to survive, we will have to have a party that occupies the center-right ground the Republican Party has traditionally occupied but has abandoned. Even if the GOP survives, it will be a generation before it can be taken seriously again. We can't continue to be America with what is functionally a one-party system.
It will be decades, if ever, before the Republicans can be a reasonable alternative to the Democrats again. My instincts tell me that something new will have to be born capable of picking up the fallen banner of Lincoln and Ike and Jerry Ford and Ronald Reagan and the Bushes and John McCain and Mitt Romney. But in the meantime, we who want to march under that banner will need a place to muster.
I'm not sure that the Democratic Party will be such a place, even temporarily. I will observe it from outside for a while, making common cause with it when I can. But I'm willing to be wrong.
Who knows? Perhaps the liberals, too, can welcome converts. Perhaps a pro-life heretic can come home.
The degree to which the Republican Party embraced a notoriously corrupt, massively ignorant, hopelessly incompetent clown like Donald Trump and the enthusiasm with which it embraced the nativist authoritarianism he stands for was a deal-breaker for me. I proudly voted for Even McMullin in 2016 and did not hesitate to mark my ballot for Joe Biden this time out. In fact, I voted a straight Democratic ticket, reasoning that an utter and global disaster at the polls was the one thing that could conceivably bring the Republican Party back to its senses.
It didn't happen, of course. And Republicans who are fond of bragging about their allegiance to the Constitution are for the most part all in on a comic opera attempt to subvert a patently fair and lawful election simply because they don't like the outcome. Those I took at their word when they claimed to be "pro-life" treat merely wearing a mask in public and practicing social distancing as an infringement on their rights as if infecting others with a potentially deadly virus was as sacred a hallmark of freedom as free speech and freedom of religion.
Not freedom of the press, of course. That seems to have disappeared from the Constitution at some point after Donald Trump took the oath to support and defend that document, which he apparently has never read and whose implacable enemy he has become.
The Republican Party has, in essence, become a conspiracy against the Constitution, against the rule of law, and against freedom itself. Now, if anything, I've become even less comfortable with the passive foreign policy the Democrats have espoused in recent decades and which people like Mr. Trump and both of the Pauls have embraced. And I have never been a fan of the coercive elements of political correctness. Social reform and the fuller extension of human rights to hitherto marginalized elements of society are good things. My own thinking on several such matters has evolved to some degree, just as the thinking of most Americans has in recent years. Still, the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples, for example, seems to me to have been approached less thoughtfully and more spitefully than it might have been. Democrats, too, have to share the blame for the advent of Donald Trump; had they not been so quick to cry "wolf!" when Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, and even McCain and Romney came along, people might have been inclined to believe those of us who tried to call people's attention to the fact that in Donald Trump, the wolf had actually come.
I have been a heretic among Democrats before, and I am not eager to repeat the experience. At least for the moment, I am content to remain independent, accountable only to my own conscience.
But nonetheless, it's hard to miss the point that battle lines have been drawn for us, even if they aren't where they wish they were. The Republican Party has set its face like flint in opposition to the values this nation has always stood for. I find myself making common cause with the Democrats again, even though I am reluctant to once again number myself among them. People like Steve Schmidt of The Lincoln Project, a long-time Republican strategist for people like John McCain, have become registered Democrats. Tim Miller of The Bulwark has a perspective on our former party, much like mine. He argues that Never Trump ex-Republicans have already become functional Democrats whether we call ourselves such or not. Jonathan Chait thinks that given the fact that the battle lines have been drawn for us, Never Trumpers should, at least for the present, make the Democratic Party our home because it's there that the democratic resistance to the greatest threat our way of life faces has its focus.
The argument has its appeal. Quite a few of my fellow Never Trumpers argue that our place is standing with the Biden wing of the Democratic Party as it resists the coming challenge from the far-left. And as Chait points out, even the AOC/Bernie Sanders wing of the party needs us; its cherished belief to the contrary, there is no great groundswell of buyers for what they are selling. If they are going to achieve any influence on the direction of our national policy at all, as bitter a pill as it may be for them to swallow, they can achieve it only by making common cause with the center.
And it's the center, I'm convinced, where the future of American politics lies. It's hard to see that at times. We are so polarized as a nation that the left and the right's extremes seem to be the only games in town. But despite all the damage Donald Trump has done to this nation- and it is varied and profound- he's also done us one favor: he's reminded us reasonable, thoughtful conservatives and liberals alike that we have more in common with each other than either has with the zanies on their own sides of the ideological fence.
Am I going to end up as what Tim Miller calls a "red dog Democrat?" I don't know. My past experience makes me a little skeptical of the heresy hunters. But somehow, there has to be a place in the church of American democracy in which the boundaries of orthodoxy are not only clearly defined but elastic enough to allow the mind and the conscience to breathe. Somewhere there has to be a place where we can discuss our differences and find common ground instead of trying to destroy each other over them.
I remain a bit skeptical about the Democratic Party being that place. But I'm willing to be wrong. In fact, I'm eager to be proven wrong. I'm not yet willing to call myself a Democrat again. I am not yet convinced that it's a viable course. I still remain convinced that for our democracy to survive, we will have to have a party that occupies the center-right ground the Republican Party has traditionally occupied but has abandoned. Even if the GOP survives, it will be a generation before it can be taken seriously again. We can't continue to be America with what is functionally a one-party system.
It will be decades, if ever, before the Republicans can be a reasonable alternative to the Democrats again. My instincts tell me that something new will have to be born capable of picking up the fallen banner of Lincoln and Ike and Jerry Ford and Ronald Reagan and the Bushes and John McCain and Mitt Romney. But in the meantime, we who want to march under that banner will need a place to muster.
I'm not sure that the Democratic Party will be such a place, even temporarily. I will observe it from outside for a while, making common cause with it when I can. But I'm willing to be wrong.
Who knows? Perhaps the liberals, too, can welcome converts. Perhaps a pro-life heretic can come home.
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