New Democrat Update

WHY REPUBLICANS MUST DO BETTER

The Republican Party has moved so far to the extreme right that it is no longer recognizable from the days of President Abraham Lincoln or, for that matter, President Ronald Reagan. The steady decline in the quality and quantity of the party’s ideas has only intensified during and since the George W. Bush years.

Republicans, in Washington as well as in Colorado, lack any new ideas that address our current challenges. The GOP has clearly become much more sure of what it is against than what it is for.

What is missing among conservatives is a vigorous debate among themselves. Their dialogue has become so stagnant that Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute has coined a new term, “epistemic closure” to characterize the Republican dilemma. In this context, "epistemic closure" means that no new thinking is required because it is overwhelmingly self-evident that what is already known is more than enough for the challenges of today.

In other words, conservatives are saying that there is nothing new for them to learn. To solve problems and become the majority party, they can simply pull out their old playbooks and say all the same "tried-and-true" words. They could not be more wrong.

If all that voters hear from conservatives are outdated proposals or "No" to the other party’s ideas, Republicans will be constantly playing defense, ensuring their eventual decline. Some Democrats may welcome such a sad state of affairs for our opponents. However, in the long run, an idea-free, naysaying Republican Party is not good for the country, or for that matter, even our party.

Without healthy political competition, Democrats will only get sloppy and will be sure to eventually lose touch with mainstream Americans. More importantly, much of the country’s progress since its beginning can be traced to a vigorous exchange of ideas and views. Our Founding Fathers deeply believed that robust intellectual debate from all parts of the political spectrum is essential to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Without any new ideas in its arsenal, the modern Republican Party has increasingly resorted to the politics of divide-and-conquer, rehashing worn-out battles and opening old wounds. That too has not been good for the country.

UNIFYING AND DIVIDING

Lincoln’s Republican legacy of national unity has been torn to shreds - the most recent divide-and-conquer version starting in the 1960s and continuing through today. Incredibly, at least two GOP governors have engaged in the politics of division by talking in "states’ rights" terms, absurdly raising the possibility of leaving the Union and the nobility of the Confederacy cause.

Only a year ago, Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry, with a wink and a nod, said "There's a lot of different scenarios. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." As reported by Fox News, many in the crowd were disgracefully yelling "Secede!"

Just last month, Virginia Republican Governor Robert McDonnell issued a formal proclamation heralding his state’s entry into the Confederacy and the bravery of its soldiers, without mentioning the real purpose of why the South fought the war in the first place - to preserve an institution that, by 1860, had enslaved almost four million human beings in the United States. The South’s mantra of "states’ rights" became prominent only after the abomination had become much too difficult to defend before and after the Civil War.

McDonnell only made matters worse when asked by the Washington Post about the glaring omission. "There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia."

That explanation is mind-boggling. In 1997, former Virginia Republican Governor George Allen issued a similar "no-slavery" Confederacy proclamation, triggering a divisive furor in the state (His inflammatory racist "macaca" comment later in life may have ended his political career). Did McDonnell really think the history of slavery would be a matter of minor importance, especially to African-Americans - one-fifth of his constituency?

Falsely equalizing human bondage with the "other issues" involved represents another outrage. Without slavery, secession would have never happened. And without secession, there would have been no Civil War.

Ed Kilgore, managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and son of the South, sums up what the Confederacy was really all about. "It was an armed revolution led by a planter class that could not tolerate restrictions on the ‘right’ to transfer its human property into the territories. It was a ‘Cause’ centered in the states most dependent on slavery, made possible by a secession bitterly opposed by poor white farmers in much of the region, and imposed on them by the narrowest of margins. It was a rebellion whose success entirely relied on the calculation that the people of the North would not sacrifice for abstractions like the Union and Freedom. Its inevitable defeat plunged the South and all of its people into a century of grinding poverty, isolation, and oligarchical government. Its heritage has been used again and again to justify racism and every other sort of reactionary policy."

Perry and McDonnell are considered to be two of the GOP’s leading stars. Both are well within the mainstream of their party, the first as governor of the second most-populated state in the nation and the other touted as a role model for building a conservative majority and unifying the country!

Why should any of this squabble over the Civil War matter today? It matters because how we see our past says a lot about how we view the present and future. Elected leaders who do not understand the true meaning and causes of the most divisive period in American history cannot be well-suited to unify us today. This blind spot is sure to seriously impair their ability to lead and govern effectively in an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse nation.

The fundamental difference between the parties could not be starker. While Democrats have been trying to unify the country along these lines for decades, Republicans have been on a relentless "Southern Strategy" since the days of President Richard Nixon.

Perry and McDonnell provide the latest evidence. Secession was never on the agenda or in the rhetoric of Texas’ last Democratic governor, the late Ann Richards. Virginia’s last two Democratic governors discontinued the Confederacy proclamation and, as mentioned above, a McDonnell GOP predecessor also issued one without a single mention of slavery.

These controversies matter now because, as long as a critical mass of citizens believe in this historical nonsense, there will always be those more than willing to pit Americans against each other. Unfortunately, that kind of destructive demagoguery is most effective when it is least desirable - in periods of rapid change or tough economic times.

Until today’s politics of division ends, our public policy dialogue and legitimate political debates will be considerably less than what they should be. America will continue to fall far short of its full potential.

Of course, Democrats must continue to do their part. But Republicans are clearly the guilty party here. Maybe the GOP should stop calling itself the "party of Lincoln" until it starts trying to unify the country, rather than continually dividing it.