Trump’s ascendancy may have revealed a new flexibility for the Republican Party. Whew. This may just save the party over the long run, and protect some down-ticket candidates in the short term. Instead of closing the tent ever more tightly on who can be a Republican in good standing, the nomination of the manifestly heterodox Trump has left the Tea Party/Tax Pledge/Social Issue straight jacket of ideological purity in tatters. Since the purveyors of bitter-end conservatism have lost their stranglehold, the center-right ought to be back in play.
What the GOP and the country need is for Republican moderates to self-identify as a faction, and seek political relevance with the fondest bidders. By default we go Republican. But where the standard bearer is a bigoted, misogynistic, morally dubious, provocateur of our enemies (except perhaps for Russia) and antagonist of our friends – or if a candidate is a whacky extremist – then moderates put themselves in play by threatening to move over and across the center line toward the other party. The rupture need not and should not be permanent, but we may have to earn our political leverage.
Specifically, if a candidate (up or down the ticket) seems ignorant of or oblivious to our Constitution, the rule of law, and the concept of separation of powers and other checks and balances – we run don’t walk to the side that commits to these values. If the core of the GOP shows the moderates as much love as they do for gun absolutists or the religiously intransigent, then we stay put. The party of Reagan, Eisenhower and Lincoln, to say nothing of Teddy Roosevelt, can certainly accommodate pragmatists along with purists. The common bonds are there: promoting free enterprise and innovation, limited government, equality of opportunity, personal accountability and work ethic, the importance of strong families, the value of faith or moral tradition, concrete compassion for the weak, the notion that personal character matters, and the beneficial role of strong American leadership in the world.
Let’s call this potentially fickle faction the “Lincoln Wing” of the Republican Party. After all, the first GOP president was a pragmatist Whig not too long before he was a pragmatic Republican. The party’s roots stem of course from a President who re-dedicated his country and party to liberty for all, with powerful social investments (of blood and treasure) to back up the moral, economic and educational purposes of government (ending the sin of slavery, building up our financial and transportation infrastructure, and funding land grant universities around the nation).
What the Lincoln Wing needs now are some physical and virtual rallies to demonstrate our intensity and our breadth of our support; leaders to negotiate some deals for us, and thinkers brave enough to withstand the taunts of RINO to craft some coherent themes and policy perspectives. If the purists and ideologues say good riddance – “we don’t need you any more than we needed the old Rockefeller Republicans” – then I guess we know where we stand. Maybe the Democrats will want to make nice with moderates even more, and be nudged closer to the middle. But Republicans need to do more than flirt with moderation to avoid demographic demise. The party would be foolish to write off the young, the new, the urban, the diverse, and the educated.
If the country moves closer to centrist compromises as a result, well that would be just fine. And if every future Supreme Court Justice were confirmed within a range that included hyper-qualified and fair nominees of the likes of both Merrick Garland and John Roberts, we could do a lot worse. Looking to appoint partisan judges (in either direction) and constantly stoking their political urges is not the solution. In fact, it is a big part of the problem – namely, contesting hot-button politics time and again in the courts. Better to at least try to de-politicize the judicial process somewhat, rather than demanding our presidential candidates appoint judges whose future opinions are pre-ordained.
In short, forget about a third party. Don’t move to Canada. Self-identify as a center-right moderate looking for the government to solve some problems with common sense – not ideological litmus tests. Let’s get Mitt Romney, John Kasich and Mitch Daniels back in the game. Let them lead us away from the precipice of extremism and hate, and toward our better angels. Put some pressure on both sides’ extremists to corral them back toward the American middle. That may call for ticket-splitting this time around. It could hurt to choose the lesser evil, but standing on the principle of what is best for the country can demand compromise of lesser loyalties. If the incoherent, dangerous chaos of Trump mobilizes a new Lincoln Wing to eke out some actual political purchase, well, that would be huge.
Alan Raul is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and has held appointments from Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
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