Republicans’ ‘big tent’ is now an isolation booth

In August 2016, three months before he was elected president, Donald Trump endorsed three Republicans who had expressed reservations about him: Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), then Speaker of the House of Representatives, and U.S. Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and John McCain (R-Ariz). “We will have our differences,” Trump declared, “but we will disagree as friends.”

Trump said he embraced “the wisdom of Ronald Reagan’s ‘big tent’ within the party. Big, big tent. Remember Ronald Reagan … He included Reagan Democrats and independents and Republicans. A lot of people. We’re going to have the same thing.”

That was 2016.

In 2021, as his caucus considered removing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as the third-ranking Republican leader in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “This Republican Party’s a very big tent. Everybody’s invited in.”

As the Republican National Committee voted to censure Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for voting to impeach President Trump and joining the House Select Committee investigating the assault on the U.S. Capitol, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel maintained, “Disagreement in our party is welcome. It makes us great. We can have a big tent.”

In practice, however, Reagan’s 11^th Commandment — “Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican” — is a dead letter.

The recent purge of  Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) demonstrates that the Republicans’ big tent is in fact an isolation booth, even for individuals who endorse Trump’s baseless claims about the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Jacobs’s conservative credentials are unimpeachable. He has a 100 percent favorable rating from the National Right to Life Committee (zero percent from Planned Parenthood); 89 percent from Heritage Action for America; 70 percent from the John Birch Society; 92 percent from the fiscally conservative Americans For Prosperity; 100 percent from the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Jacobs voted to reject the certification of election returns from Arizona and Pennsylvania. He voted against President Biden’s American Rescue Plan of 2021 and the Build Back Better Act.

Bills sponsored by Jacobs include: banning tax-payer funded abortions and abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detectable; rejecting new abortion drugs and imposing additional regulatory requirements on those that have previously been approved; recognizing gender identity based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth to determine compliance with Title IX regulations for athletics; limiting travel by the vice president until the immigration crisis on the southwest border of the United States is resolved; prohibiting the secretary of education from providing federal funds to a school unless in-person instruction is available to all students and parents may opt out of student mask mandates; providing a means by which non-residents of a state whose residents may carry concealed firearms may also do so in the state.

Jacobs seemed almost certain to be re-elected.

Deeply moved by the mass-shooting in a Tops Market located close to his district, Jacobs (who had worked closely with Katherine Massie, one of the victims, when he served on the Buffalo Board of Education) announced he would support legislation banning AR-15-style assault weapons, raising the minimum age for rifle purchases to 21, limiting the size of ammunition magazines, and prohibiting sales of body armor to civilians.

Almost immediately, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that Jacobs had “caved to the gun grabbers.” New York conservatives and virtually every Republican elected official withdrew their endorsements of the congressman. State GOP chair Nicholas Langworthy began circulating petitions to run against him in the Aug. 23 Republican primary. Carl Paladino, a former GOP candidate for governor, who has called Adolf Hitler “the kind of leader we need,” joined the race as well, with support from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As he announced he would not seek re-election, Jacobs declared, “We have a problem in our country in terms of both our major parties. If you stray from a party position you are annihilated.” For Republicans “that includes gun control. Any gun control.”

Since the 1980s, the Republican and Democratic parties have become more ideologically homogeneous. But partisan polarization has been asymmetrical. 

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign manager and White House counselor, once boasted that while Democrats prepare for pillow fights, Republicans inflict head wounds. And Republicans are much more likely than their Democratic counterparts to punish anyone who deviates from the party line.

Now that Republican inquisitors have excommunicated Rep. Jacobs, Americans should think about who is next — Who will remain silent to avoid the same fate? — and the tendency of GOP legislators to ignore, misdiagnose, or prescribe band-aids for grievous injuries to our society, when a majority of their constituents support more impactful measures.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”