At this stage in the presidential election process, I cannot see a single Republican candidate for whom I am even remotely likely to vote. My endorsement of John Edwards for the Democratic nomination stands.
But I’ve changed my voter registration to Republican, and I’ve become a regular contributor to Republicans for Environmental Protection. For those who have seen me through nearly innumerable marriages, theological affiliations, and body modifications, this probably seems like still more evidence of the frivolous inconstancy for which I am renowned among those who know me best.
I’m well, well to the left of the contemporary Republican party on virtually every important issue of our time. Yet I’m old enough to remember a time when the term “liberal Republican” was not an oxymoron. On my mother’s side, I come from a long line of staunch Republicans. They were pro-choice, cosmopolitan, and deeply tolerant. They were fiscal conservatives who believed in hard work and limited government. They were agnostics and Episcopalians (which, of course, are not mutually exclusive categories). They sat on the board of the local Planned Parenthood, and they were active in the Sierra Club.
Most Republicans like that have been driven out of the party. A few survive here and there, but they have been effectively marginalized by the shrill voices of the right. In my childhood, figures like the splendid Millicent Fenwick defined the progressive Republican whom my family admired. She’s got a few intellectual inheritors (Susan Collins in Maine, Chris Shays in Connecticut, Mike Castle in Delaware) but not many. California’s redistricting has meant that the few Republicans that are elected are all very conservative; true “moderate elephants” are found mostly in New England these days, and their numbers are shrinking.
I want an America where both major parties are committed to eradicating poverty, protecting the environment, and ensuring civil liberties. I want an America where it is the consensus position of both parties that our natural resources need protecting, and an America where even staunch fiscal conservatives are also strong conservationists. I am old enough — just — to remember when there were quite a significant number of environmentally responsible, socially tolerant Republicans.
America will be healthier when there are more.
So though I don’t imagine I’ll vote for any current GOP candidate, I’m giving quietly to the Main Street Partnership and Republicans for Environmental Protection. I want to help, in a small way, build a party of fiscal conservatives, social moderates, and environmental enthusiasts. (The chances of anyone in either party embracing a vegan animal rights agenda seem decidedly remote at this point.) While the far-right sneers and talks of RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), I can point to a long legacy of environmentally conscious, socially progressive Republicans from Teddy Roosevelt to Millicent Fenwick to Olympia Snowe. The legacy of the “liberal Republican” is older than that of the Club for Growth and the Christian Coalition. And the sooner the pernicious influence of unbridled development and social intrusiveness is curtailed within the GOP, so much the better.
I have no idea who I am voting for in the GOP primary yet, by the way.
Ok so HOW? Simply put, how does one maintain limited government yet accomplish all those objectives? Legality requires policing (so to speak). Policing requires giving of power to all those monitoring the general public to see who is appropriately meeting those objectives of the agenda at hand. Therein lies the problem. The larger and often more lofty the objective, the larger the staff needed; the larger the potential for corruption as individuals with their own perspectives/agenda (often self serving and ego based) go unchecked but for the grace of God. How do “we” get past the selfish majority?
YES absolutely choice is God given, environmental protection is an essential cause, religious zealotry is the bain of any True Christianity, bigotry is abbhorant, etc. All that’s well and good. Just wondering now what the missing link is- what restores relational humanity when every “side” of the issues has it’s own solution- mostly all self serving. I think it’s a grass roots/community thing.
Anyone can make a “cause” a pulpit for destruction, but for His protection. The real issue is whatever the title they do so under, what’s the aftermath. Killing off decency and genuine caring for the “fellow man” is all I’ve seen in modern politics so far- since I was five and involved in it’s filthy outskirts.
Ann, while (as I wrote on Monday) I do believe that spiritual solutions are often the most enduring, I do believe that people of faith can be involved in building the Kingdom in a variety of ways, including participation in the political process. I don’t intend to build a Christian political party. I want to see the Republican party (to which I have some old ties) become more reflective, more moderate, more receptive to the notion that conservation is conservative. That’s not going to be the magic bullet that makes the world happier, but it will help.
I, too, want an America where two major parties are committed to eradicating poverty, protecting the environment, and ensuring civil liberties. Currently we have somewhere between no and one major parties committed to these things, the progressive part of the Democratic party being a non-trivial fraction of the whole. Wouldn’t it make more sense to concentrate one’s capacity for building a truly progressive major political party in the major political party that’s already kind-of-sort-of-halfway there, rather than the major political party that mostly defines itself in antithesis to progressive values?
The problem is that even if you can find a few Republicans who vote reasonably some of the time (a pure hypothetical since on critical issues of war and peace, your so-called moderate Republicans invariably vote with the rest of the lot), at a practical level, they will be a minority in a majority reactionary party. Which makes them something between useful idiots and enablers.
Pete McCloskey is probably the closest thing to a decent Republican we have in this day and age. Which explains why he’s out of office, and just changed his party affiliation.
Faux, I was a big Pete McCloskey fan too.
Noumena, note that I’m working both sides of the fence here. I’ve given to John Edwards enthusiastically, and want to see as many of his progressive ideas as possible incorporated into Hillary Clinton’s platform (when she gets her inevitable nomination).
But in order to build a progressive America, the key is moving BOTH parties left, at least on key issues like the environment.
My objection still applies. Instead of splitting our (progressives’) time and money between two parties, why not invest them in the one where we’re far more likely to make some noticeable impact?
Actually, given the current climate, a small band of determined environmentalists have more chance of impacting at least a few desperate GOP politicians staring at a bleak 2008 political map (especially in the house and senate) than we do with the Democrats, who are rolling in money and confidence at the moment.
When what used to the be the center becomes the right, and what used to be the left becomes the center, we’ll be making good progress.
Did I miss something here or did you not actually say WHY you changed your voter registration, particularly if you’re endorsing a democratic candidate.
I probably ought to get this by now but your summation of a ‘liberal republican’ sounds like a democrat (except for the small government part).
Sigh.
Good heavens, Hugo’s gone Republican, even if in name only. The world lurches, the natural order is upset….
How many other registered Republicans do you know, Hugo, who admit to voting for the Socialist Equity and Green candidates?
This passage:
I want an America where both major parties are committed to eradicating poverty, protecting the environment, and ensuring civil liberties. I want an America where it is the consensus position of both parties that our natural resources need protecting, and an America where even staunch fiscal conservatives are also strong conservationists.
Reminds me of something Barack Obama wrote, where he said (I’m paraphrasing, don’t have his book on hand) that he wants a coalition of democrats, republicans and independents who will work together for a brighter American future because they know we can achieve more together than we can separately.
Perhaps it’s true that a conservative can be for more civil liberties, but environmental protection requires government regulations and funded research, bureaucracy, taxes, and placing values on things the market might not yet recognize. These are anathema to fiscal conservatism. Not to mention intangible values many people on the right do not share, or the party would be more environmental friendly. Sure some of them like to hike and hunt, and there are many hiking and hunting organizations. But most conservatives pick private property rights over the endangered species act any day of the week. Just look at the voting records of Scalia and Thomas.
Any explanations as to how the kind of environmental laws we will need in this century will match up with conservative ideas are welcome. Personally, I’m in favor of market based solutions, because when done right, they work. Look at what cap and trade did for SO2 pollution. BUT if they’re so beloved by the Republicans, why don’t we have one for CO2 yet?
Elizabeth, my point is that the GOP has a legacy of the very kind of environmental friendliness you mention — it’s just been lost in recent decades.
Check out conservamerica.org
Property rights are crucial to market-based environmental policy solutions though.
C02 emissions are harder because the diverse sources give rise to resistance across both parties. Look at the behavior of the Michigan congressional delegation and generally Democratic-supporting auto unions toward raising automotive fuel standards. A molecule of methane is 21 times more potent than a molecule of carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas. Yet, members of both parties pass subsidies for rice framing and livestock production.
If “moderate republicans” are useful idiots, especially on critical issues of war and peace, then what are democrats who hold the Constitutional power to stop funding war operations yet continually give the President exactly what he wants, and occasionally more, by often large majorities?
Hugo, I think the Dems have tripped up many a time, mostly for trying to act like Republicans. Don’t make the same mistake. Instead of trying to resuscitate a dead elephant, I would suggest you focus on the progressive party that already exists and devote your time to the Democratic party. The Republican party of your parents or even your youth simply doesn’t exist any more. The party bosses decided to follow the path of intolerance and bigotry.
And just in case you have bought the lies about “fiscal conservatism” the Dems have proven at every opportunity in the 20th century that they are the best at handling our economy. See http://www.academycomputerservice.com/economics/charts.htm for a comparison of the last two and http://www.washoedems.org/files/articles/Economic_Trends.pdf for something more substantial, since at least WWII. In pretty much every measure, the economy, workers, and environment were better off under the Dems.
Let it go, my friend. The Elephant has died and it’s stinking up the joint.
John,
I have never voted for a Socialist Equity candidate (never had the opportunity!) but I am proof positive that there is at least one Republican out there other than Hugo who admits to voting for a Green Party candidate (Rich Whitney, who ran for Governor in Illinois last year).
To other commenters: To many Republicans who grew up in the Northeast, Maine in my case, our attitude is very much that the Republican party has been leaving us, not the other way around. My political role models were Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen, and John McKernan, none of whom would get too far in today’s Republican party. Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins remain among the few Republicans with national standing who come close to representing my politics. Where I grew up, ‘Liberal Republican’ was no misnomer.
‘RINO’s’ like myself have two options – bolt, or work to bring the party back on course. The first option is far easier and would make both the Faux’s of this world and the Republican right happy. The second option is the one I choose, despite the inherent difficult and inevitable sneering.
Cheers,
Profane (‘Useful Idiot’, ‘Enabler’)
the Dems have proven at every opportunity in the 20th century that they are the best at handling our economy
The charts suggest, if anything at all, a divided control of power is best. Also, the charts do not include the past year (stops at May 2006) so factoring in the performance of the macroeconomy and stock market since then, the charts begin to look very similiar, except for the 9/11 impacts.
In the second link, the author attempts to control for that (although does not really address the full impact of monetary policy, which is not necessarily linked to the party of an Administration). Again, the author goes through an elaborate statistical dance merely to conclude
“Statistical correlation does not scientifically prove causation, and these results do not prove that the
economy does better under Democrats. But we can reasonably conclude that these government statistics provide evidence that directly contradicts the argument that the economy does better on average under Republican administrations. With lagged effects and other causes considered, the difference may be insignificant, but the economy may actually perform worse under Republicans” … the operative terms being “does not..prove,” “may be insignificant,” and “may.”
You skipped over the parts of
“Republicans may nonetheless object to the conclusion that the size of government has not increased more under Democratic administrations, since Democrats (Roosevelt and Johnson) are responsible for the creation of both Social Security and Medicare, two of the largest components of federal spending, along with national defense spending and interest on the national debt. It is difficult to find objective measurements of these future obligations for comparison, but the argument is valid, even if the partisan
comparison has been weakened by the recent unpaid expansion of Medicare drug benefits.” (did he say the argument is valid? How did that get through peer review?)
Or this statement – “Certainly government could often perform some of these functions better, but if less
government was always good for the economy, then Somalia would be one of the world’s wealthiest countries instead of one of its poorest..” Wow, union membership has steadily declined over the last 25 years and the economy has grown steadily..wonder if the author wants to apply the same kind of thinking..
And then there’s always the trick of concluding with another unproven, grossly simplified claim.. “Because they tend to believe that problems are complex, Democrats are
more likely to heed expert advice.”
While I wouldn’t be offering this article around as supporting literature, I do agree with your point that the current Republican leadership does not merit the trait of “fiscal conservatism.”
Amen, Profane.
I commend Vir Modestus for bringing up the Elephant in the room.
BWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!
This kind of stuff is exactly why I check in here from time to time and you are on my googlereader. Keep thinking, brother.
Millicent Fenwick was one of a kind. From Vogue magazine editor to state legislator to consumer advocate to Congresswoman at 64 in her first term. Definitely “pro-choice, cosmopolitan, and deeply tolerant” as you say, Fenwick was a champion for the ERA, civil rights, and prison reform. I’m currently reading the first biography of her, Amy Shapiro’s “Millicent Fenwick: Her Way,” which came out in 2003. Based on extensive interviews with Fenwick’s son, and her personal papers, it’s quite enjoyable, if not traditionally “academic.”