Why I Gave Up On Being a Republican (Guest Voice)
Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons
Why I Gave Up On Being a Republican
by Michael Stafford
I’m a life-long Republican. My political affiliation has been woven intrinsically into the very fabric of my being.
My first political act was passionately lobbying my fourth-grade classmates to vote for Reagan over Walter Mondale in a mock election in 1984. As an adult, I continued to be a rock-solid Republican- I helped run my law school’s chapter of the Federalist Society and its Republican club. And after the election of President Obama in 2008, I served as an officer in my state Republican Party. For the next two years, I devoted substantial amounts of my time, my talent, and my treasure to supporting local candidates running for office and to building the Party organization.
Today, however, I am a registered Republican no longer.
I came to the decision to leave the GOP not with a heavy heart, but with a broken one.
As a local GOP official after President Obama’s election, I had a front-row seat as it became infected by a dangerous and virulent form of political rabies.
In the grip of this contagion, the Republican Party has come unhinged. Its fevered hallucinations involve threats from imaginary communists and socialists who, seemingly, lurk around every corner. Climate change- a reality recognized by every single significant scientific body and academy in the world- is a liberal conspiracy conjured up by Al Gore and other leftists who want to destroy America. Large numbers of Republicans- the notorious birthers- believe that the President was not born in the United States. Even worse, few figures in the GOP have the courage to confront them.
Republican economic policies are also indefensible. The GOP constantly claims its opponents are engaged in “class warfare,” but this is an exercise in projection. In Republican proposals, the wealthy win, and the rest of us lose- one only has to look at Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget to see that.
As Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein have written, “the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Its reckless behavior helps drive the political dysfunction crippling our nation.
In the end, it offers a dystopian vision of our future- a harsher, crueler and more merciless America starkly divided between the riders, and the ridden.
From the moment the Tea Party emerged on the scene, I had a premonition that I would eventually have to leave the GOP. But my mind conjured innumerable reasons for delay- for putting off the day of reckoning in the desperate hope that some game-changing miracle would occur, such as a victory by Governor Jon Huntsman in the Republican presidential primary.
But no miracle happened. Among all the difficult truths I’ve had to face, perhaps none has been harder than the realization that I, and those dissidents like me, are unrepresentative outliers far removed from, and largely unable to influence, the main currents of opinion within the GOP.
Ultimately, leaving the GOP was necessary in order to maintain my own integrity. Leaving is also a public act of personal protest. I am under no illusions about its broader significance- it will have no impact on the trajectory of the political narrative in this nation. But that does not make it futile. On the contrary, as the shadows lengthen, such minor individual acts of defiance and dissent are more critical now than ever before.
Perhaps, one day, a reformed and responsible Republican Party will reemerge.
But until then, the GOP and I have reached a parting of the ways. In the poignant words of “Kathleen Mavourneen,” an old Irish ballad: “It may be for years, and it may be forever”
© Copyright 2012 Michael Stafford, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full. Michael Stafford is a former Republican Party officer and the author of “An Upward Calling.” Michael can be reached at anupwardcalling@yahoo.com
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Thank you for your courage and thoughtful comments.
The impact you and other discouraged Republicans and ex-Republicans have may be more than you imagine… You people, not us Democrats, are the true wake-up call.
In this era of tribal, cult-like political loyalties it’s encouraging to see a story like this. Better to have the scales fall from eyes late than never.
“The GOP constantly claims its opponents are engaged in “class warfare,” but this is an exercise in projection.”
That is a constant theme here, along with “both parties do it” with no effort to discriminate between parties as to either the amount or the detrimental effect, as Mann and Ornstein have elucidated.
Everybody seems to agree that the Tea Party congress people and those who promote and elect them are outliers in political decorum, but some seem to see all the Democrats the same way, never giving any examples which would point out the similarities or differences; simply stating “they all do it”. There seems to be no discretion between Tea Party and mainline Republicans; between left-wing liberals and moderate Democrats. It’s frustrating.
In the poignant words of “Kathleen Mavourneen,” an old Irish ballad: “It may be for years, and it may be forever”
Then, again, it may be a stop on a long journey.
Interesting essay. I left the GOP long before Stafford did, but always felt it was more like they left me. The GOP demonstrated it was willing to toss aside commitment to limited government, fiscal responsibility and respect for individual privacy if it served their purpose, especially in the area of social conservatism. This was well before the Tea Party showed up, and of course things have gotten even worse in many respects since then. In the area of fiscal responsibility the Tea Party has reactively swung back too far, focusing exclusively on tax cuts and spending cuts.
I’m sorta with DG.
As with ‘SteveK’ the “integrity” quote articulates my disillusionment precisely.
Thank you for an intelligent essay. I have long wondered where all the sane Republicans have gone and why there has been so little outrage about the GOP’s current state.
Even as a registered Democrat, I often long for an opposition party that was less ideological and more pragmatic. It would be great to feel that there was a choice and that all the moderates within the GOP were allowed to coexist with the more conservative members. How much further to the right can the party go? How much further away from reason and science can they lead us? How can they expect to lead fill positions of national leadership without any attempt at compromise or national unity ? Its as though the talk radio idiots were running the country, convincing their listeners that white is black and up is down.
Yes, I’m insane and still voting Rep, so are many of us that can’t jump the divide to become tax and spenders. -We can still not like things the Reps without jumping ship.
Welcome to the middle amigo. Its cold and dirty, the plumbing sucks, there’s never any TP in the bathroom, and even though there are lots here we feel very alone, but at least we get to be ourselves.
Moderate right, Amigo.