My favorite comment along that line is this one, which begins in a way that is always auspicious for a letter to the editor: "You, sir, are a first-class idiot, and if you think that the Republicans are any better than the totalitarian Democrats you should have your head examined. Collusion between the Republicans and the Democrats are what put us into this mess, and neither will get us out."
I have to admit there is something to this—not the part about me being a first-class idiot, mind you. I've been observing Washington, DC, long enough to know that I would never make it into the first tier. The competition is just too intense.
But there is an element of truth to the part about the Republican establishment sharing the blame because it has not challenged the statist status quo. And that's why, in the past, I have described myself as independent and as criticizing both sides in the political debate, which is true. But I have recently given up on describing myself as non-partisan, and I have grown more comfortable declaring membership in one party, partly for some immediate reasons that will be obvious in this election year, but also for a deeper reason that has to do with the entire structure of our political system.
Part of the reason I've dropped the idea of being non-partisan is that I don't want to imply that I am open to voting for or supporting Democrats. That party has become too dominated by the far left, from the top leadership to the grassroots to the "netroots." So my position is still what it was when I offered my 2006 election recommendation, except that the subsequent four years have strengthened my conclusion: the Democrats have nothing of value to offer in America's political debate. In foreign policy, they offer only defeatism; in economics, they offer only looting and bankruptcy; and in this era of political correctness, limits on campaign speech, and dark conspiracy theories about the Chamber of Commerce, they don't even stand for free speech any more. So I believe that the Democrats need to be shut out of American politics.
In 2006, I pointed out that the political right does offer something of value. There may be plenty of statist establishment Republicans, but there is at least a debate within the Republican Party between its small-government wing and its "compassionate conservative" wing, between its hawkish wing and its conventional "realist" wing, between its religious wing and its pro-free-market "libertarians." That was true four years ago, but it is much easier to see now, when secular issues have moved to the forefront and radical small-government "constitutional conservatives" have the establishment on the run.
Two recent news articles highlight this trend.
At National Journal, Josh Kraushaar describes how the small-government radicals in the Republican Party are performing the best in their congressional races, contrary to the conventional wisdom.
One of the dominant myths of this election season is that Republicans have nominated too-extreme tea party candidates who are not electable in general elections, making it difficult for them to maximize their gains. It's been easy for cable talk show hosts to make that argument, given the high-profile, seriously-flawed candidacies of Christine O'Donnell and Carl Paladino, among others.But in reality, the clear majority of conservative and tea party nominees have proven themselves to be squarely in line with the electorate's mood and are well-positioned to usher in one of the most conservative Congresses since 1994.
Despite the Democratic portrayal of the tea party as extreme, Americans have soured over the increased scope of government under President Obama and the Democratic Congress—and are looking for a course correction. A newly-released ABC News/Yahoo poll shows that 55 percent of Americans think the tea party can "effectively bring about major changes in the way the government operates." It's a far cry from the official Democratic Party argument that the tea party represents the American fringe.
Republican candidates who have openly advocated for conservative principles are, by and large, outperforming GOP colleagues who have run to the center.
This means that the Republican Congress that will be elected on November 2 will be relatively strongly devoted to free-market principles and backed by a mandate from the public. As Kraushaar concludes, "when you have ardently conservative/libertarian Republican Senate challengers all across the country—from Rand Paul to Sharron Angle to Ron Johnson—preaching the gospel of limited government and leading in polls, there's something going on."
Dick Morris also looks at how this election is transforming the Republican Party. His whole article is well worth reading, but the opening paragraph will give you the basic idea.
A fundamental change is gripping the Republican grass roots as they animate the GOP surge to a major victory in the 2010 elections. No longer do evangelical or social issues dominate the Republican ground troops. Now economic and fiscal issues prevail. The Tea Party has made the Republican Party safe for libertarians.
I don't call myself a "libertarian," not even with a small "l," because the label is too closely associated with a quasi-pacifist, blame-America-first foreign policy and with the view that moral subjectivism is the ideological basis for liberty. But Morris is using it here to mean "secular pro-free-marketer," which definitely describes my outlook. I think he is right that the Republican Party is being made safe for those who share that outlook—which could mean the final end for the Libertarian Party.
After forty years, I think we can say that the Libertarians' attempt to create a third party has failed—in large part because I am not the only one who is turned off by the Libertarians' foreign policy and philosophy of life. Yet the cause of small government is succeeding, and secular free-marketers are being offered a chance to join the Republican Party on very favorable terms.
But there is another reason why I'm declaring myself as a Republican, and it is not just because my wing of the party happens to be gaining in influence right now. I am a Republican because James Madison would want me to be.
I'm not referring to the fact that Madison was a leader in Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party—because that party has since transmogrified itself, through the odd ironies of history, into the Democratic Party. (The current Republican Party owes its origins to Abraham Lincoln and the anti-slavery Free Soil Party.)
What I mean is that the political system created and defended by Madison discourages small splinter parties and tends to herd us all into large, diverse ideological coalitions, where we're always going to be forced to cooperate with coalition partners we're not entirely comfortable with. And that's a good thing.
Let's take a look at the theory, famously described by Madison in the The Federalist No. 10—if you can trust that nefarious anonymous political operative who calls himself "Publius."
Madison was concerned about keeping a small faction from gaining control of the government and using the power of the state to prop up its narrow interests at the expense of everyone else's rights. So the Constitution put in place several safeguards meant to prevent that from happening. One of the most important and least appreciated is our system of district-by-district, winner-take-all representation. This can be seen best in contrast to awful European party-slate systems, where a splinter party that gets only 10% of the vote gets 10% of the seats in parliament, to be chosen by the party from among its loyalists. (This was the system the UN initially set up in Iraq, fueling sectarianism in that country's elections. It has since been moderated, with partially beneficial results.)
In America, by contrast, you could have a political party that captures 10% of the vote in districts across the country, and that would get them precisely zero seats in Congress. To have any significant amount of political power, a party has to appeal to clear majorities in a large number of congressional districts spread throughout the country. This leads us to the main point of The Federalist No. 10. Madison argued that a large and diverse republic would "enlarge the sphere" to encompass so many different factions—different religious beliefs, different regional and economic interests, and so on—that no one faction, even if it could gain a majority in a few congressional districts, would be able to wield significant political power.
The result is to discourage the formation of narrow political factions, which means discouraging the creation of small splinter parties. Rather, our system encourages the gathering of these different factions together in two big coalitions that are able to appeal to a broad majority across the country. But these party coalitions cannot be joined together by narrow factional interests. They have to be held together by some kind of broader vision of America's interests and the role of government. That is, the two major parties have to be ideological coalitions held together, if not by a consistent ideology, then at least by some kind of loose ideological affinity.
Madison and the Founding Fathers did not originally envision or approve of the creation of political parties, but they created the conditions that shaped our modern political parties and made them what they are. So when we lament that the Republican Party makes too many compromises, or that its agenda is inconsistent, or that it contains factions we don't like, in a way we are missing the point. That's the way the system is supposed to work. And as I said, that's a good thing. Why? Because the same system that prevents our own small faction from gaining political power, the same system that waters down and compromises our political goals, also keeps other small factions—the greens or the unions, for example—from wielding unchecked political power.
This doesn't mean that we can't ever move the country toward greater liberty and smaller government. What it means is that we can't do it as a small splinter party. We have to first gain the support or sympathy of a broad majority of voters—which is precisely what the Tea Party movement has done in the past year and a half.
Politically, if we understand that two broad coalition parties is the way the system works and the way it ought to work, then we should accept that system and find our place within it. That doesn't mean becoming a party hack or always voting a straight ticket out of blind loyalty. But it does mean that we should pick the party that is most open to our ideas—I don't think there's any contest on that issue—and set up our political home there. Then, working both within the party and outside the party, through education and advocacy in the culture, try to bring more people into ideological sympathy with our agenda.
The Tea Party movement has shown that it can be done. It's up to us to show that we can maintain and extend the ideological advantage we have now—and the best way to do that is to reform the Republican Party from within and keep applying pressure on the leadership from the Tea Party grassroots.
James Madison would have wanted it that way.—RWT
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