April 30, 2009--Arlen Specter and the Dixiecrats and Whigs

Arlen Specter switched parties just as we were about to head north and so I got a direct dose of how my Florida Republican friends took the news.

One said, “Good riddance. All along I suspected he was a Democrat.” Another added that now Obama “will be able to get away with whatever he wants to do, including imposing socialism on the country. One opined that this is the end of the two-party system. And a close friend put it simply, “He’s a whore.”

When I pointed out to him that there is a long history of politicians changing parties—in fact more from the Democrats to the Republicans—he didn’t agree that maybe they too had sold their bodies for committee chairmanships or by doing so had made it easier to get reelected. He liked the idea, he reluctantly but refreshingly admitted, that these switches gave Republicans more votes in the House and Senate. “It made it easier for us to govern.”

I said, “Ditto with Specter. I don’t like him, but I’ll take his vote, thank you.”

While driving toward New York yesterday, I began to think about the future of our two-party system. Not that I agreed it was ending. After all in the past other parties—recently the Democrats—had lost congressional majorities and the White House and then came roaring back into office. The Republicans dominated our politics for decades before Obama’s remarkable win and had controlled both houses of Congress until the Democrat resurgence two years ago. Being out of power doesn’t mean the end of a party.

But what is more worrisome for and about the Republicans is that they have fewer and fewer registered voters. Only about 21 percent of Americans now consider themselves members of the Grand Old Party. One of just two moderate Republicans who remain in Congress, Olympia Snowe, wrote an op-ed piece yesterday in the New York Times in which she claimed that the GOP no longer is a party with a big tent; but rather, because they have driven away so many social moderates as they struck Faustian bargains with the religious right, that the Republicans no longer need a tent to house them--since their numbers have shrunk so much all they now require is an umbrella. (Column linked below.)

I surprised my friend when I said that I too am concerned about the continued viability of the Republican Party. To keep the Democrats from becoming as out of touch and corrupt as the Republicans have been for at least the past eight years when they had so much power, Democrats, when they have large majorities, also need to be kept in check.

But, I realized, until and unless they unshackle themselves from extreme social conservatism and return to a sincere policy of fiscal restraint more will leave their ranks and become Independents or Democrats. Arlen Specter, in a moment of remarkable candor, admitted he was switching parties in order to make it easier for him to be reelected in 2010. He noted that just this past year alone 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans had become Democrats.

Since the GOP will not be able to distance itself from its ultra-right wing base, what they need to do is form a new party—the Conservative Party.

This sort of party evolution has been common in our past. A massive party switch occurred in the 1800s and 1810s when many members of the United States Federalist Party joined the United States Democratic-Republican Party. When this party fell apart in the 1820s, its members all switched to various political parties, including the Whig Party, as well as the Democratic, National Republican, Anti-Jackson and Anti-Mason Parties.

The current version of the GOP was also formed by a massive switch in 1854 when northern members of the Whig, American, and Free Soil parties, along with a few northern Democrats, formed the Republican Party, and many Southern Whigs became Democrats.

There’s been lots of this sort of mixing and matching; and, during the 20th Century at times strong third parties emerged. In 1948, for example, a Democrat who ultimately became a Republican, Strom Thurmond, ran for president as a Dixiecrat and did quite well, carrying four states in the South.

In spite of the vitriolic way in which Senator Specter blamed the Club for Growth for driving him out of the Republican Party—they had endorsed and raised money for his rival in the Pennsylvania primary six years ago and were threatening to do so again next year—the Club has the right agenda for a new Conservative Party: legitimate fiscal conservatism, a strong national defense, and small-government, especially in regard to social issues.

They call for reforming the Tax Code and reducing taxes for all (not, like Republicans, just for the wealthy); across the board drastically limiting government spending; maintaining a strong defense (with the emphasis on defense—keeping us safe—and not, like Republicans, stressing offensive pre-emptive wars); and, most important to their future political viability, reducing government’s role in the lives of private citizens (read: an end to an obsession with homosexuality and a woman’s right to choose).

It is this latter betrayal of Republican’s traditional libertarianism principals—keeping government out of our bedrooms and hospital rooms—that has driven voters away from the GOP, particularly people of color (actually, Hispanics), the better educated, and the suburban middle class. And there will be no way to bring them “home” unless the party enlarges its tent or, better, forms a new, true Conservative Party.

It might surprise some of the folks back at the Green Owl in Delray Beach, but I might on occasion vote for this kind of genuine Conservative. As, I suspect, would millions more who now consider themselves Independents and even liberal Democrats.