A Bad Idea for Everybody

The political columnist for what I used to call The Big Paper (it's a pathetically diminshed thing these days) dedicated his big Sunday column to our local Republican Party. The GOP, barely alive as a statewide force, is planning on spending this critical election year picking out members of the club to expel. The Republicans are promoting a "closed" primary. Starting in 2012, they want to limit their primnary to people who have registered (or to use the local term of art, "affiliated") as a Republican.

There's a back story to this. After a century or so in the determined hands of nobless oblige Yankees and their ethnic followers (personified by the very tough Yankee who towered over our political world for nearly forty years), the local GOP is now dominated by the same sort of self-identified "conservatives" who are the face of the national Republican Party. They are led by our Governor, a right-winger who slipped into office eight years ago, and is now slipping out.

The back story: Four years ago the tough Yankee's son, who inherited Dad's seat in the US Senate, was forced into a primary by a mayor who is an unabashed new-style "conservative". He sings from the same hymnal as our Governor, but without his polish. The mayor was bankrolled by the Club for Growth.

The Young Senator's crime: He insisted on thinking for himself. He cast some high profile dissenting votes, most notably against our attack on Mesepotemia in 2003. He was not forgiven by the local extremists, even though he was proven right.

The irony was that the Republican National Committee poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Young Senator's campaign. The smarter folks in Washington figured out that the Young Senator could win, and the new right wing hero would lose in November. The Young Senator, despite his occasional dissent, never equivocated about his Republicaness and made it clear he would vote with the GOP to organize the Senate. He is an honest man.

Because he was honest, I did not consider voting for him, after he beat the hero handily in the primary. (My wife, however, did for reasons that hd nothing to do with the actual election) Young Senator won the September primary, but it probably cost him the election. He managed 47% of the vote against the winner, a still youngish, but stuffy Democrat whose career had seemed wrecked just four years before. (There's a moral there: you're never done in politics until you say you're done)

In the upside down world of our local Republicans the Young Senator was a fake Republican who was foisted upon them. They are oblivious to the fact that their backstabbing did him in.

Why this excursion into the weeds of extremely local political history? Because it illustrates the ominous direction in which our politics are headed. The Republicans have decided to stop being a political party as those of us who think and care about such things have known it.

American politics have been, by tradition, practical necessity and invention, been the exclusive domain of two parties. Since the mid-1850s those parties are the Ds and Rs. The "national" parties were really quadrennial coalitions of the state and territorial parties.

All politics is local, the man said. The parties traditionally welcomed all comers. They still did that when I was coming up in this racket. I actually received a personal invitation to join the Republican party. I never got an invite from the Dems, then as now, the party that dominated public office. On the other hand, I've never been told that I didn't belong. And back in the 1980s even my greatest mentor called me a "Communist". (That was OK. I loved him just the same).

The Dems still operate that way. Unfortunately, the GOP will no longer do so. It seems that the national party, in alleged memory of Ronald Reagan, are promoting a checklist to determine if you have an acceptable level of Republicaness. It's got 10 items. You are allowed to disagree on two. Which two? Any two? The columnist doesn't say.

This is bad. The Oppostion party, nationally and locally, has decided to become a very tight club, a tiny amount of dissent maybe tolerated at the margins, but broad agreement required. Or face expulsion. We've never seen anything like this.

This attitude, combined with the now established beyond a doubt fact that the national GOP's sole idea to return to office is rule or ruin, means the next few years will be very trying. I have no doubt of their willingness and capacity to ruin. It seems not to occue to them that ruling a ruin will not be very gratifying.

As for the Young Senator. He left the Republican party the year he left office. He declined to join the Democrats. He had declined to endorse George W. Bush for reelection, and supported Obama last year.

He's announcing his independent candidacy for Governor tomorrow morning. He's leading the early polls.