Alex Henderson has a great story on Alternet, ”Here Are 5 Reagan-Era Republicans Who Would Not Be Welcome in Trump’s GOP Party of 2018.” Remembering Reagan’s rule that someone who agrees with him 80% of the time is “an 80% ally rather than a 20% traitor,” Henderson reminds us that, although Reagan was very conservative and began the movement that pushed the Republican Party to the Right, he made libertarians like Goldwater and Anthony Kennedy feel as welcome as culture warriors like Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed. Reagan’s fragile conservative Republican coalition had room for folks as disparate as Arlen Spector, Ron Paul, and John McCain. Henderson doesn’t stress the obvious—that Reagan’s Republican Party was already smaller in ideological breadth than the Eisenhower or even Nixon-era Republicans. There wasn’t room for a Jacob Javitts or Margaret Chase Smith, never mind a Nelson Rockefeller in the Reagan Republican Party. But that 80/20 rule, with fewer purity tests, allowed for a governing coalition—and even allowed liberal Democrats like Ted Kennedy or Barney Frank find enough common ground on specific issues to craft good legislation.
That’s all gone in the Trump-era GOP. It’s been disappearing for a long time. Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert between them destroyed the House of Representatives. Mitch McConnell has done that with the Senate. Henderson points out that the single biggest reason that Kavanaugh will be confirmed no matter the evidence is that Trump’s GOP is all about purity tests. You can’t disagree once, never mind 20% of the time. Folks like Susan Collins are terrified of being pushed out of the Party—as happened previously to Lincoln Chafee and others. The 5 who would no longer be welcome of Henderson’s title are: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (too moderate on abortion and other matters); former PA Gov. Tom Ridge; General and Secretary of State Colin Powell (pro-choice, only moderately hawkish, pro-immigration, pro-affirmative action, and supporting moderate forms of gun control); Arlen Spector (voted against Bork); Sen. John H. Chafee (Lincoln’s father).
But these would hardly be the only Reagan-era conservatives no longer welcome in the GOP. Hell, MSNBC is full of them as talking heads.
Democrats need to learn a lesson here. I am a progressive and a liberal. I own a T-shirt with Wellstone’s famous motto, “I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” I am overjoyed that we seem, as a party, to be moving away from Clinton-era Centrism and back toward the “human rights, economic, and social justice” party that I embraced in my youth. BUT, if we are to have any long-term life and effectiveness, we must be a Big Tent party. We have to have room for Blue Dogs. Yes, ConservaDems like Donnelly, Manchin, Heitkamp, and even McCaskill can be frustrating, but we need them for a governing majority. And I like McCaskill as a person and would gladly trade her for either of my horrible senators (McConnell and Rand Paul). I have more patience with Claire McCaskill being as progressive as she can be and still be reelected in MO than I do for Diane Feinstein’s lukewarm moderateness when she represents one of the most liberal states in the country! (CA moved left and DiFi didn’t move with it.) We Dems need our own 80/20 rule, although Manchin should realize that means he should agree with US 80%, not with the GOP 80%--especially concerning sexual predators on the Supreme Court. (I mean, c’mon, Joe, your Tea Party counterpart from WV, Shelly Moore Capito (RWNJ) is starting to show more concern about Kavanaugh and more compassion for his accusers than you are!)
My asides above show how difficult an 80/20 Big Tent coalition is to keep together. Progressives like myself will be frustrated by ConservaDems and Blue Dogs. Doubtless, we will equally frustrate them. Here on DKos, the motto has always been, “More and Better Democrats,” but we have fierce fights (pie and otherwise) over what constitutes “Better Democrats.” Some of us worry that all the sane GOPers fleeing Trumpism might drag our party back to the right. I’m glad a good many are re-registering as Independents, not Democrats. But SOME form of Big Tent is necessary or we’ll soon be in the same position as the Trump Republican Party. Namely, even if we can get elected, and even take over every branch of the federal govt., we could find it impossible to govern because of our purity tests. Good governance is the entire point of representative democracy.
We need to know how to argue and then come together. Sometimes we’ve been better at that than others. I surely don’t have all the answers on how we are to do this. But the small tent Trump GOP is there as an object lesson for what we can expect if we fail to achieve the 80/20 balance.
Am I more excited about the upcoming election (hopefully) of a progressive like Andrew Gillum than a moderate like Kyrsten Sinema? Of course, but I will cheer equally loudly on election night if/when they are declared the victors. We’re trying to prevent the fall of our democratic republic into fascism. It’s all hands on deck. We need all of us—long term as well as for the duration of this emergency. We don’t have to like everyone in the Big Tent. We’re pretty good around here about welcoming and celebrating the increasing diversity of our party in race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity. We need to get better at tolerating a range of differences (within limits) of diversity in ideology. We can/should argue and disagree. But we also have to keep finding enough common ground to work together and win—and to govern once we’ve won.