It’s time for a GOP boycott
For quite a few elections, in the 1970s and ’80s, I voted for any Republican running against the local Democratic congressman, Austin Murphy.
I did so for one reason only, and it wasn’t because I was a fan of the GOP. I considered Murphy a very bad congressman, a no-account, do-nothing seat warmer with few scruples. (My suspicions were later confirmed by several unsavory episodes. Murphy eventually retired under a cloud, his reputation torn and tattered.)
I don’t remember any of the Republicans’ names; I can’t say I knew their names even as I was casting ballots for them. It was enough that they were running against Murphy.
Given the makeup of Congress in those days, Murphy’s defeat and replacement by a Republican would have meant absolutely nothing: Democrats were and would remain in control of the House of Representatives.
I’m sure, looking back, I felt free to vote for Murphy’s Republican rivals for this very reason. I also knew that Murphy would never actually walk the plank: his elections were automatic, pretty much preordained.
My extravagantly naive hope was that Murphy would take notice that a small number (I assumed) of reliably Democratic voters had cast their lot with his Republican opponents. In short, I wanted to send the congressman a message. I failed, of course, as I figured I would. Nevertheless, I persisted, election after election after election. My vote against Murphy represented a protest against a candidate I could not abide.
All this is a preface. Let me say, as kindly as I can to my Republican friends (and foes), now is the time to send a message to the erstwhile party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan to just stop it:
n Stop denigrating science and the very notion of fact-based reality (in the case of climate change and the news media, to say nothing of certain congressional investigations).
n Stop the twisted and politically convenient interpretation of the Second Amendment that underlies the proliferation of weapons of mass murder in the hands of people too young, too unstable or too dangerous to possess them.
n Stop eroding the right and the opportunity to vote in this country. Cleverly devised restrictions on the franchise are an affront to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Instead of making voting harder, lawmakers in regions all over the country should be striving to make the process easier.
n Stop enabling the president of the United States to ride roughshod over the country’s security by playing whatever game he’s playing with the Russians and Vladimir Putin.
How is this message to be delivered? Simple. Abandon the Grand Old Party for an election or two or three, or until the party born in the tumult of the anti-slavery movement awakes from its slumber in the la-la land of know-nothingness.
This is hard, I realize. Political identity, like religious affiliation, helps define who we are as individuals. While casting aside Austin Murphy, I still considered myself a stalwart of the party of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy.
But what I’m asking here is not the same as refusing to pull a voting lever for one stinking congressman. This is asking Republicans to turn their back on every Republican candidate for any office, the good candidates as well as the bad, the significant as well as those who would wield little if any power.
It has come down to this: the Republican Party has strayed so far from democratic norms that it now poses a very real threat to democracy itself. This rip in the fabric of democracy must be mended, and rapidly.
In The Atlantic magazine recently, two bipartisan scholars, Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, called for a boycott of the GOP, pointing to the ways the Republican Party has become the party of Trumpism, a feature of which is an attack on the rule of law. The president’s war on the Justice Department, including the FBI, as well as on federal judges, are unprecedented in the history of the United States, they said
“Many” Republicans have “chuckled” at Trump’s antics, while others have “cheered.” A party “that functions this way is not functioning as a democratic actor,” Rauch and Wittes argue.
The goal of a GOP boycott is to “make the Republican Party answerable at every level, exacting a political price so stinging as to force the party back into the democratic fold.”
A center-right party, with an allegiance to individual initiative and small, hometown government, has a vital role to play in a big, brawling, continental democracy such as ours. It’s time for the GOP to come home. It’s time for sensible and patriotic Republicans to hammer home the message to party leaders that laying waste to the foundations of democratic governance is simply unacceptable.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.