The Anti-Republican Republican Party

Commonwealth (paper); Commonwealth (Kindle)

This morning on Morning Edition, Ina Jaffe interviewed two very different registered republican voters, both elderly. In a report titled “Older Voters Could Decide Outcome in Volatile Wisc.” one elderly registered republican voter says that she has had enough. Without ever saying so directly, she said, in effect, that the Republican Party is no longer republican. It is anti-republican. And so she is voting Democratic, both in the presidential and in the senate race. Another elderly registered republican voter is sticking with Mitt Romney. Without ever saying so, he is the reason why the first voter is voting for President Obama. He is what I call an “anti-republican Republican.”

I mention these two Wisconsin voters and Ina Jaffe’s report because some readers of my book (Commonwealth (paper); Commonwealth (Kindle)) have cynically suggested that the first kind of republican simply doesn’t exist. And, yet, in my experience the voter in Ina Jaffe’s report is far from the exception. Many republicans – particularly elderly republicans – remember a party that still supported public parks, public transportation, public education, public libraries, police, fire, and emergency rescue, public utilities, and even (in 1968, 1972, and 1976) public health care. They remember a Republican Party that still embraced the values and institutions from which their party took its name: res publica, the wealth we hold in common, or simply “commonwealth.” These republicans have sat quietly, watching in disbelief as their party leaders pursued what used to be an almost exclusively democratic strategy: a self-serving, cynical appeal to private self-interest over public values and institutions. But, as the republican woman interviewed in Ina Jaffe’s report put it, “no more.” She recognizes that there is but one republican presidential candidate, only one candidate that believes in res publica, in the wealth we hold in common, in commonwealth.

The other registered republican, the one who is voting a straight Republican ticket? Let’s just say, prior to 1932, that “republican” would have voted a straight Democratic ticket. That’s because, prior to 1932 it was the Democrats who were the outspoken opponents of the centralized federal government, the enemies of federal taxation and regulation, and the champions of local government, states rights, and, oh yes, racial segregation and Jim Crow. But, then, something happened called the Great Crash and the subsequent Great Depression. And the Democratic leadership began to reconsider its historical opposition to republican values and institutions. To be sure, still in 1932 most African Americans still voted a straight Republican ticket. And, in 1932 most Republican leaders still feared that Keynesian-style deficit spending was a sure recipe for German-style economic disaster. Yet, by 1960, the Democratic Party had done a complete about-face, showing ironically that it was better able than its Republican rival to build and safe-guard republican values and institutions.

So, what happened to the Republicans? Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Republican leadership was actually fighting a two-front conflict. On the one hand they were battling Democrats who had stolen their thunder. On the other hand, however, they were also battling an influx of anti-republican Republican ideologues – folks like Leo Strauss, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich von Hayek who had absolutely no knowledge and even less interest in traditional American republicanism. Instead, this radical fringe viewed American politics through a lens cut by their recent experience of Europe, seeing just beneath the skin of every federalist and true republican a not too thinly disguised Nazi and Bolshevik clamoring for centralized state control and the elimination of liberty. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower knew well how to put such outliers in their place, writing to his brother in 1954:

To attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything – even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon ‘moderation’ in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business an from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.[i]

Yes, in 1954 their number was negligible. And, yet, as every Republican knew, their party was losing ground daily to a Democratic Party that was increasingly viewed as the champion of public institutions and public values. It was therefore perhaps inevitable that one party or the other lift the banner of anti-republicanism and anti-federalism; the banner of the traditional enemies of the 1787 U.S. Constitution and its unlimited federalism. The great irony is that the party that lustily embraced and lifted this banner with the candidacy of the anti-republican, anti-federalist Ronald Reagan in 1980 was the Republican Party.

Thereafter, with increasing reckless fiscal abandon and disregard for its own traditions, the Republican Party became the anti-republican, anti-federalist party.

All of this may seem like nothing more than a boring history lesson. Who cares? Well, for one, there is an elderly registered Republican in Wisconsin who cares. She is voting for Obama. And my guess is that there are many, many more just like her who know that the Republican Party is no longer republican, but who cannot believe or who do not yet understand that it is the Democratic Party that is now the sole advocate of the wealth we hold in common.

If this description fits anyone you know, or if you are simply curious about how the Republican Party became its opposite or how the Democratic Party came to embrace republican values and institutions, I urge you to send them a copy of my book: “Commonwealth: or Why Democrats are Republicans and Republicans are Neither,” available in both Kindle and paper editions.


[i] Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal and confidential To Edgar Newton Eisenhower, 8 November 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1147. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1147.cfm

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