When Your Party Leaves You and You Have No Place to Go

Ronald Reagan famously said that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left him.  With what is happening in the Republican Party these days, I think I am beginning to know how he felt.  The only difference is that, when the Democratic Party left President Reagan, he had some place else to go.  I don’t.  

During the GOP’s virtual convention, The Wall Street Journal¹ wrote about Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party:

“President Trump is accepting the nomination for a second term before a party that has largely united behind him, embracing his America-first foreign and economic policies and unorthodox, sometimes chaotic style.

Mr. Trump has taken command of the GOP through a combination of persuasion and purges.  He has brought rank-and-file Republican voters around to his views on economic, social and foreign-policy issues.”

The Journal described those views as follows:

“[President Trump] will offer voters the same restrictive immigration policy, ‘America First’ trade deals and us-against-them language that he employed in 2016, reinforcing a shift of the party’s philosophical core away from free traders, foreign-policy hawks and fiscal conservatives.”

While the Democratic convention included all three former Democratic presidents, as well as former nominees Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, the President Trump’s Republican convention included neither President George W. Bush nor the party’s 2012 nominees for President and Vice President, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Bobby Jindal wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed just before the Republican convention that, President Trump hasn’t just convinced Republicans to support him, his views are taking over the party:

“Whether Mr. Trump leaves office next year or in 2025, Republican voters will likely continue their push for populist policies rather than revert to traditional conservative orthodoxy on issues like trade, immigration and foreign policy.”

While President Trump has “delivered on some traditional GOP priorities, including tax cuts,² deregulation, and installing conservative judges,” the differences in policy and, especially, style between President Trump and what used to be traditional Republicanism are night and day.  Traditional Republicans valued friends and allies.  Traditional Republicans wouldn’t withdraw troops from Germany in a snit because German Chancellor Angela Merkel wouldn’t come to an in-person G7 meeting in Washington during a pandemic.³  Yes, NATO allies need to spend more on defense, but allies help us as well as us helping them.  According to former Defense Secretary James Mattis, there is a saying in the Marines: "When you are going to a gunfight, bring all of your friends with guns."  How many friends will we have at the end of a second Trump term?

Traditional Republicans know that President Trump’s mercantilist ideas on foreign trade were demolished by Adam Smith almost 250 years ago.  I favor efforts to stop illegal immigration.  President Trump opposes all immigration.

Traditional Republicans understand that, unless Modern Monetary Theory is right,⁴ entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, need reforming and the longer we wait, the more painful it will be.

I understand some of these “traditional Republican views” may not be popular right now.  But the party I want to belong to believes in what is right, not what sounds good in a tweet.  I believe that the United States leading the world helps avoid war for the United States and the world.  As we get farther away from the Cold War and World War II, this idea may not be as obvious as it was before.  But that doesn’t mean we abandon it; it means that we need to explain to voters why it is right.

Our best leaders, in America and the Republican Party, have been those who explained to voters why we needed to do certain things and led them to do those things.  As Paul Ryan said about trying the reform entitlements while he was in Congress: “The way I look at things is if you want to be good at this kind of job, you have to be willing to lose it.”  That’s the purpose of politics and the purpose of political parties.  It is to be for the right things and to explain to the voters why those things are right, even if being right means you lose now and then.

As I said above, when the Democratic Party left President Reagan, he had someplace else to go.  I don’t.  I disagree with so much of what President Trump does and what those who support him seem to believe in, but the other party is worse on policy.  A lot of them seem to really believe in the Magic Money Tree.  They believe more and more government will make things better.  While they talk about re-engaging with allies, do they mean anything more than rejoining the Paris accords on climate change and the Iran nuclear deal?  President Obama was drawing back from a U.S. leadership role in the world when he was in office.⁵  Why do we think today’s Democratic Party will do anything different?

With the Republican Party leaving me and the Democratic Party not one I can join, where do I go?  I don’t know.
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¹ I realize that articles from The Wall Street Journal are mostly behind the Journal’s paywall.  I apologize.
² Much of the hard work of actually getting the tax cuts passed, however, was done by then-House Speaker Paul Ryan and Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey.
³ Administration spokespeople deny this was the reason and say the idea had been in the planning stages for months.  Does anybody believe that?
⁴ Or “Magic Money Tree.”
⁵ In 2016, I wrote that Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton, would be the one to continue Barack Obama’s retreat from American leadership.  While President Trump has been more obnoxious about it, the general direction of his policy has been much the same as President Obama.