“The Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader
With Apologies To “Red Rider”
“Lunatic fringe, I
know you’re out there somewhere...”
Actually, the lunatic
fringe can be found in Texas. They are
called Republicans.
Somehow,
I don’t think Tom Cochrane and Company were thinking about the Texas
Republicans when they penned their signature song all those years ago, but if
the shoe fits...
Not
all Republicans are created equal. The
Republican Party of the twenty-first century is not your father’s Republican
Party. That Republican party, dominated
by the likes of Ike, Nixon, and Ford, was much more pragmatic and even
progressive. Ike, being of the
military, understood the dangers of the military-industrial complex, and the
need for the preservation of civil liberties, despite the Cold War. Nixon, for all of his faults, was a very
progressive President. Under Nixon,
environmental laws were toughened, and the EPA was born. Nixon, ever the pragmatist, realized that
the China policy refusing to recognize the People’s Republic, while
ideologically correct, was economically and internationally penny-wise and
pound-foolish, and was more than willing to abandon dogma and rhetoric. Ford, the only President never elected to
either the Presidency or the Vice-Presidency, courageously followed the
pragmatic (and correct) course with his pardon of Nixon, challenging the
country to put the past in the past and move on, to forgive and forget.
Even
Reagan, while certainly not a progressive, was a pragmatist, and like Nixon
before him, abandoned strict dogma when a more pragmatic approach was
available. When Reagan realized that
some of his ideas were bad ones (such as “Star Wars”), he was intelligent
enough to let them die and pursue other, better options to achieve his
goals. (In lieu of “Star Wars”, his
buildup of the conventional military ultimately achieved more than “Star Wars”
ever could -- the collapse of the Soviet empire.)
If
you look at these four Presidents, and the other prominent Republicans during
their presidencies such as Earl Warren, Bob Dole, and Bob Michel, there is one
common thread -- they are all from non-Southern states with rich traditions of
progressivism and pragmatism. (Ike and
Dole were from Kansas; Warren, Nixon, and Reagan from California; Michel from
Illinois; Ford from Michigan.) Contrast
that Republican Party with the current version, which is dominated by
reactionary Southerners -- the retiring Sens. Jesse, Strom, and Phil, and Rep.
Dick Armey; Rep. Tom DeLay; Sen. Trent Lott; Mr. Ashcroft (although from
Missouri, Ashcroft is from a region that is ideologically similar to the old
Confederacy); the brothers Bush; the brothers Hutchinson; Newt Gingrich. Unlike their Republican predecessors, these
new, Texas Republicans (the Texans are disproportionately represented among the
group) are not pragmatists but ideologues, and will follow dogma and ideology
over pragmatism and practicality. There
are no shades of gray -- the world is black and white.
This
explains, of course, how a party manages to go from Ford’s message of “let the
past be in the past” with respect to Nixon’s very major Presidential
indiscretions to the relentless pursuit of the Clintons by Gingrinch, Lott, and
Company over some minor indiscretions.
(Yes, an office affair was a minor indiscretion.) How did this happen to the Republicans?
Simple. The Southern Democrats defected. As the Northern wing of the Democratic Party
gained in strength and began to eliminate Jim Crow, the Southern wing defected
to the Republicans. The straw that
broke the camel’s back for the Southern Democrats was the betrayal by one of
their own, LBJ, who, although a Texan, helped champion the greatest and most
sweeping civil rights legislation that this nation has ever seen. Simultaneous to the liberalization of the
Democrats by a Southerner, no less, the pragmatic wing of the Republican Party
was aging (and dying off), which provided a great opportunity for those
Southern Democrats who no longer had a home to stage a takeover of the
Republicans, which is exactly what happened.
Somewhere during the first Reagan term, the Benedict Arnold Democrats
gained a numerical advantage over the dying pragmatists, and with it, the
ideological control of the party. It
took a dozen years or so for the ideology to filter to all parts of the party
to the point where the Republican Party morphed into the old Southern
Democratic Party, a party of intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry.
It
is always sad to see a great institution ruined from within. Although I have never voted Republican,
except once in a primary to vote against John Ashcroft, there have been some
exceptional Republican statesmen over the years whose memories are being
forever tarnished by the vengeful and hateful Texas Republicans of today. Is the Republican Party of today the party
of Abe Lincoln? Hardly. It is more like the party of the Radical
Republicans who despised Lincoln for offering forgiveness to the South and who
messed up our country’s race relations for nearly a century with their petty
and punitive form of Reconstruction.
Not only is the demise of the once-Grand Old Party a tragedy, but so is
the subduing of one of its great families, the Bushes. Grandpa Bush was a well-respected member of
the United States Senate from Connecticut, and George I was also well-respected
for not only his service in the United States Congress, but also with federal
agencies like the CIA. His sons,
however, have prostituted their family name and values in order to get elected
by aligning themselves with the Texas Republicans and their intolerance. The Bush name has forever been tarnished.
Just
like the Democrats should take heed from the demise of the Whigs in the 1850s,
the Republicans should take heed from the demise of the Democrats in 1860s (the
Republicans ideological kin). Remember,
after the Whigs faltered, the Democrats became the only national party, but
somehow still managed to lose the election of 1860 to the upstart Abe Lincoln. Why?
The ideologues had taken control of the party, and would not accept the
pragmatism of Stephen Douglas, who had defeated Lincoln in Illinois two years
prior. Instead, the ideologues
nominated their own ideological candidate, Breckenridge, thus dividing the
party in two. Needless to say,
Breckenridge did not carry one single free state, Douglas carried a slave and
part of a free state, and Lincoln won every other free state, a plurality of
the popular vote, and the Presidency.
The Democrats, mostly because of their own arrogance, crashed and
burned, which precipitated a four-year bloody war.
No
one wanted to see such a war then, and I am confident that no one wants to see
one now. Republicans, let history be
your guide -- the politics of bigotry and hate led to death and destruction
then. Is the any reason to believe that
the result will be any different now?