Unrecognized because they’re not thought about – yet they may be the GOP’s best hope for the future. What are they?
Old politicians.
At one time, the GOP was a respected institution. They understood governance meant compromise, fiscal responsibility, respect for science, and conservatism – all concepts far beyond the majority of the GOP today.
And these old politicians and functionaries are still around and still remember. Bruce Bartlett is one of them, researching how Fox News has mis-served the GOP and conservatives by peddling bad information to trusting watchers. I’m sure former Senator Lugar, too, has many useful memories.
In the same company is former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson, a truly moderate Republican who has been part of the Minnesota political scene since at least 1965. He was recently interviewed by the Twin Cities paper City Pages and has some fascinating, if not surprising, memories:
We in America tend to use this phrase “all of a sudden.” There’s no all of a sudden. This has been going on almost 40 years, going back to the 1970s. In Minnesota, it erupted in the form of Christian conservatives coming in. They first came into the Democratic Party. And they introduced this litmus-test philosophy, largely on the issue of abortion, but there was strong religious overtones. And they found the Democratic Party pretty hostile.
I would say in the ’80s, the takeover of the Republican Party was complete. It also started to take on some ugly overtones on human rights, the feeling that we, society, had gone too far, for human rights.
The hostility of the cultural conservatives was in some ways unbelievable:
I had introduced, I think, the first gay rights bill in Minnesota’s history when I was on the Minneapolis City Council. That would’ve been 1965 or ’66. That became the defining issue of the 1994 campaign. I was booed off the stage in St. Cloud — I was the governor, for Christ’s sake — and booed in Forest Lake. They invited me to speak at the convention, and not only was I booed there, but they turned their backs on me.
I don’t know how many times in American history a sitting governor was denied endorsement. But the rudeness was rather stunning.
It strikes me as a form of self-confidence, of certainty, that is nearly unsupportable in anyone who wishes to be considered reasonable – that is, be able to get along with their neighbors. As I’ve addressed this before here, I shan’t go on at any length except to say that this very dogmatism does not sustain variance well at all. The psyche that demands such certainty will split a movement rather than compromise, and I think we’re seeing that as the GOP’s membership shrinks, as some elected GOP officials are now refusing to endorse Trump – and, in a few cases, refuse to even vote for him.
But does such a tendency to self-destruct bode well or ill for the Republic? Must we go through another period of literal bloodshed before those Who Can’t Possibly Be Wrong are willing to take their self-selected responsibilities seriously?
But to get back to my point – at one time the GOP was full of reasonable people who understood that holding variant opinions didn’t make you evil – just different evaluations on difficult topics. Today’s young people (i.e., anyone who doesn’t remember 1990 politics, which was when things started going wrong on the national level, as Representative Gingrich began touting his Republican Revolution) may believe that this is how politics has always been.
And to some extent it’s been true – politics attracts the ideologues as well as the sober, earnest politician, the power-hungry as well as those who only want justice. Think of Vice President Aaron Burr, President Andrew Jackson, and numerous others who wanted power, or purity, or what have you.
But the GOP was the party of Lincoln, who saw their way to justice. Their fall has been gradual and engineered, judging from Carlson’s remarks – and something to think about in the future.
