Where Went My Republicans?

I was dismayed in 1963 when Lyndon Johnson became President.  In 1964, I was drawn into local Republican politics, mainly to support Minnesota State legislator Bill Frenzel, a very decent guy who later became our Congressman in Minnesota’s 3^rd.  Bill served in Congress for 20 years, becoming ranking member of House Budget, a powerful voice on Ways and Means, and the Congressional representative to GATT.  Socially liberal, fiscally cautious and responsible; my kind of Republican.

Back to ’64: I was sent to the Hennepin County convention as a delegate to support Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a model socially liberal/fiscally conservative Republican committed to public service despite his elitist upbringing and wealth. Goldwaterites took the Minnesota delegation to the National Convention.  My Democratic friends warned me that if I voted for Goldwater we’d be committing troops to an Asian War within a year and ropping bombs on Cambodia and North Vietnam.  It turned out they were right, but I was torn between these new true-believer Republicans and Lyndon J; I wound up voting for neither.

My Grandfathers were Republican, one a friend and ally of fellow Akron, Ohioan Wendell Wilkie.  Wilkie was berated by classic Conservative Republicans as too internationalist, too moderate. My Dad, in turn, was a Republican who worked under FDR and Truman.  But under the sledgehammers of Sen. Hickenlooper, Sen. McCarthy, and Rep. Richard Nixon, then of the HUAC, Dad began to waver.  The persecution of Robert Oppenheimer drove a wedge between him and Eisenhower. Stevenson appeared more like the Republicans he was comfortable with, and that I was attracted to.

Nixon acted out his amorality, to no surprise in our family.  Ford, a decent guy, brought into the picture a new sort of Republican: Cheney and Rumsfeld, hints of what was to come.  Reagan lacked that thoughtful moderation I admired in Rockefeller Republicans.  He enabled in Iran-Contra the most egregious attack on our Constitution and got away with it.  By the time “W” arrived, Republican meant that good’ol boy, BBQ and beer, Southern bigot (Bush was no bigot, but his supporters throughout the South?) along with the win-at-all costs Cheney and Rumsfeld, then in their full colors.

 

And now it’s He-who-shall-not-be-named who has taken Republicanism as I knew it--socially liberal, fiscally moderate, internationally engaged--to a new, all-time low.  The GOP ain’t so grand anymore.  Gone are the social libertarians; gone are the fiscally moderate; gone are the Republicans like G.H.W. Bush and Bill Frenzel who believed in multi-lateral trade rules aimed at reducing barriers and international collaboration to address problems. Gone are men and women whose allegiance was to their principles and conscience and to our Constitution. 

Now “Republican” means selfishness, goodies for us, pandering to the resentful, preaching America First and Alone, pandering to social reactionaries who promote government intervention into marriage, child bearing, and the teaching of science and history. And looking the other way. These are not my Republicans and haven’t been for a couple of decades now.  Where did my Republicans go? 

The GOP was born in the 1850s as a third party in protest of the Know Nothings; is it again time for a new third party of principle and common sense, of outreach to the world?  I hope to see it.