Occasional TMV contributor Dennis Sanders recently interviewed Travis Johnson, the founder of a new group attempting to recyle the concept of “Progressive Republicans.” I appreciated much of what Johnson told Sanders — for instance, on why his group co-opted the term “progressive” …
Progressive traditionally refers to Republicans. Heck, Teddy Roosevelt ran for another term in the White House as a Progressive. The American Left only took to the term when President Nixon made “liberal” too loaded a term for them to use.
A ‘Progressive’ according to the dictionary is someone interested in making the world a better place. A Progressive, in my opinion, is someone interested in making a brighter future for our children. I refuse to believe the Democrats have exclusive rights to the future.
I also appreciated Johnson’s enthusiasm and confidence. Later in the interview, he summarizes his group’s plans this way:
The first step is to get the members of the Party who have hidden their Progressive views to publicly announce who they are, begin to self-identify as a Progressive Republican. Then we have to bring the Progressives who left the Party to join the Democrats back home. We can’t do this without them. Then we have to get into the local, state and national party apparatus and make our voices heard as loudly as we can.
We’re going to save the Party and, by extension, the country. I think that’s worth a little noise.
Of course, while Johnson is trying to identify and recruit progressive minds for the GOP, the Democrats — notably via the efforts of the Blue Dog Caucus, Rahm Emanuel, and Howard Dean — have had a several-year head start on recruiting (and getting elected) a cadre of fiscally and/or socially conservative candidates. (Recall the fourth point in my prior post on the variables working against a GOP revivial.)
Progressive Republicans. Conservative Democrats. Seriously: What’s the difference? And if we can’t tell the difference, then I have to repeat my recent broken-recordness and ask again: Why bother with political parties at all — especially when the check-and-balance of “a single-party system with competing factions,” which we’ve seen already on the state level, is starting to manifest on the federal level?