Dedicated to MTG
The Republican party includes a small cadre of congressmen and women who act like self-appointed party gatekeepers. These people claim to be standard-bearers commanding who can remain a member in good standing. They do their utmost to inflame the rank and file against designated targets. Republicans who don’t meet their standards are considered heretics or apostates. The gatekeepers employ the term ‘Republicans in name only’ (RINO) to delegitimize fellow Republicans.
I am not aware of a similar derogatory acronym or word used by Democrats describing those who don’t toe their purity litmus tests. Liberals, socialists, and progressives do a better job of keeping their differences hidden behind closed doors. The appearance of unity can be very powerful. Hint. Hint.
Presidents Reagan and Nixon understood that wisdom. Reagan chose as his V.P. the guy who coined the expression “voodoo economics” to belittle Reagan’s economic philosophy. It is more than coincidental that they won large popular majorities, and thus commanded, not just claimed, a popular mandate. The 11th Commandment was more than rhetoric for them.
Obviously, standards are necessary to define what a political party represents. Does authenticity require adherence to the designated standards at a rate of 70, 80, 90 or 100%? How does a member stay in the good graces of the gatekeepers? Who decides what litmus tests must be passed for acceptability? Gatekeepers declare, like Seinfeld’s ‘food Nazi’, no party for you.
Political parties take positions concerning the role of government, taxation, spending, national defense, traditional values, welfare, immigration, and the interpretation of the Constitution.
The question, once basic criteria are established, is what degree of compliance is required to avoid excommunication? On how many issues can one stray and not be called a RINO?
There are no official answers to any of these questions. However, the ad homonym ‘RINO’ is a favorite in conservative social circles, media and on the campaign trail. It’s the flip side of ‘never Trumpers’.
In some cases, it’s a political curse directed at people who have voted and governed in an overwhelming conservative fashion for decades. Just to name a few on the long list are Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Mike Johnson, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions. It’s not uncommon for name callers to be among those who have never fought in the trenches or even been on the conservative side until recent times. For example, an orange haired past president.
A basic rule of trying to convince someone to lean your way might not include calling conservative veterans’ derogatory names. “How to win friends and influence people” is a concept that has alluded the gatekeeper’s gaze.
However, the degree to which any institution wants to retain members, let alone grow, there must be some flexibility.
In the old days, if you got a ‘D’ in school, everyone agreed you had failed. Is the equivalent of a political ‘C’ or ‘B’ pure enough to get a passing grade from the gatekeepers? Or is the party doomed to be a minority party obstructed by self-professed ‘A’ students?
More dramatically, will a previous ‘A’ student be rejected if he or she dares to differ with a president on a controversial issue like a “stolen” election or the nature of a disturbance at the Capitol?
Even a saint will stray on occasion. Your favorite party leader rarely adheres to party doctrine 100% of the time. We know, in too much detail, how often faith leaders stary from faith mandates. Let alone lay believers. Can a religion be built and thrive with only Saint’s and Apostles? Can a party?
Republican self-appointed gatekeepers have disqualified, Paul Ryan, a Tea Party favorite, Mike Johnson, and Kevin McCarthy life-long conservatives and supporters of Trump. The conservative credentials of these men have been born-out by their voting record hundreds of times.
Conservative Supreme Court justices can write opinions that are 90% in accord with the desires of the most conservative Republicans yet be labeled RINOs.
Why do good conservatives stray from doctrine on occasion? Because once the previously pure attain a position of leadership or in the case of justices, neutrality before the law, the purity of rhetoric and past positions comes face to face with the necessity of garnering 218 votes or putting the Constitution ahead of partisanship.
The Speaker of The House is responsible for more than rhetoric and the desires of those in his district. The same holds true whether he’s Mike Johnson, Kevin McCarthy, or Paul Ryan. Representative Johnson proceeds at his and the party’s risk if he ignores the 20 or so members who won slim majorities in districts carried by Biden. District pick-ups in California and New York in 2022 would surely have been lost had wining candidates adhering to the gatekeeper’s standards.
Purity of positions among small majorities renders progress impossible. The comfort of being in a safe district, where compromise is not a necessity, allows for the harshest rhetoric and votes without paying a political price. It requires no plan other than obstruction punctuated with high horse name calling. Leadership does not have that luxury.
Today’s Speaker of the House holds the slimmest of slim majorities. He dares not ignore the reality of the 20 Congressmen. If he does, it is virtually impossible to get anything done. That’s a path that will guarantee minority status in the future.
Gatekeepers are driven by the alure of cameras and soundbites. Grandstanding generates visibility and fund raising. Acceding to reality does neither. It’s the way the gatekeepers emerge from the anonymity of being one among 535.
Jim Jordan had no desire to be Speaker because he knew purity was not possible while sitting in the Speaker’s seat.
Ironically, purity, when demanded from representatives in impure districts, has resulted in tiny majorities or minority status in the recent past. When a purist successfully primaries an electable candidate every conservative loses. Such was the case with lost Senate seats in Georgia.
Purists fail to look at the nation as it is. They claim to represent the “American people”, when in fact they represent a relatively small segment.
When the buck stops on your desk, everything looks different. The grand irony is that to get substantive change in the direction the gatekeepers desire, a large majority is necessary. Rarely can a party get a large national majority without compromising on some core issues in appropriate districts.
There can be no more dramatic example of the necessity of compromise then our Founders compromising on slavery to ratify the Constitution. They couldn’t pretend that the slave states did not exist and simultaneously preserve the union to ratify the most profound political document ever written. It took about 90 years and more than 600,000 dead to fix that imperfection.
Abortion once sent to the states is another example of purity coming face to face with reality. Sometimes winning an ideological battle in court will fix nothing. At least in the short term. Public opinion does not change based on Supreme Court decisions. Abortions have increased since the demise of Roe, in part, driven by the attempt to demand purity in very conservative states. Kansas’s attempt to outlaw all abortions is evidence of how that backfired. As Thomas Sowell reminds us, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs”.
With a big House Republican majority, a smart Speaker Gingrich coaxed and cajoled a practical Clinton into signing historic welfare reform, capital gains tax, deficit, and crime reduction legislation. It was the last time we reduced our debt. Sounds like a major conservative victory to me.
I don’t know if that kind of compromise could materialize in today’s toxic social media, sound-bite hungry cesspool; animated by self-appointed gatekeepers elbowing their way through the crowd to stand in the spotlight. Gatekeepers are unconsciously exposing the flip side of the left-wing virtue signaling coin.