Politics...You Knew It Was Coming

Not everything about this move is positive.

I recently rediscovered a writing adventure I attempted 15 years ago. I wanted to try my hand at political commentary, which wasn’t unusual for someone working in politics for twenty years.

Note: I promise that politics will not be a regular topic here. Indulge me this once.

A disturbing trend in America’s political discourse inspired that blogging experiment. Many people noticed it, but few of us genuinely recognized the danger it posed. I’m speaking, of course, of the “Tea Party.”

At the time, I referred to them as “Tea Party Terrorists.” (You can read that post, now nearly 14 years old, if you’d like to know more.) These people were not actually interested in democracy; they were only interested in power.

And here we are…

It’s almost 2024, and one of the nation’s two major political parties has wholly abandoned the Constitution.

Before I go down this rabbit hole, I should reiterate something I said all those years ago: While I am not “conservative,” I respect traditionally conservative positions. I think it’s valuable to argue for smaller government, robust national defense, and fiscal discipline.

The modern Republican party cares nothing for those positions. It stands for nothing but defeating its political opponents. As Mitt Romney has said, few Republicans believe in the Constitution at all any longer.

Let me clarify.

People have lots of differing views on what the United States (or any nation, organization, group, or even family) should do on any given issue. It’s tough to find ways to resolve those differences.

The United States has succeeded over the last 250-odd years because the founders crafted a rule book for finding consensus. That rule book is the Consitution. It defines how America resolves those differences.

The Civil War was, at its core, about preserving that rule book. When part of American society decided they were leaving because they didn’t get what they wanted from the process, the rest literally forced them to return. In other words, flipping the table and storming off when you lose is unacceptable behavior in our democracy.

Not so for the modern Republican party. For them, flipping the table is the only option.

A Short History

There are many theories about how this all came about. In my experience, it really began with Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s. (I’m not the only one who thinks this.)

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. The Cold War ended. The U.S.A., democracy, and capitalism had, for the most part, defeated the U.S.S.R., autocracy, and communism. Conservatives and the Republican Party took a lot of credit for that, which was fair.

With their primary enemy gone, however, Republicans experienced an identity crisis. Their calls for smaller government and fiscal discipline lacked the compelling reason that America needed to be nimble and flush to fight communism. Suddenly, smaller government and fiscal discipline just looked like opposition to popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Republicans needed a new enemy. Of course, opposing “big government” had always been a GOP talking point, but that phrase is far too amorphous to be a real enemy. Newt Gingrich and allies like Grover Norquist zeroed in on two enemies that were simple to vilify: The “Feds” and the “Dems.”

As McKay Coppins put it in an article in The Atlantic a few years ago, Gingrich rose to power in the party by telling Republicans that, “For their party to succeed…the next generation of Republicans would have to learn to ‘raise hell,’ to stop being so ‘nice,’ to realize that politics was, above all, a cutthroat ‘war for power’—and to start acting like it.”

His party listened.

Today, we have a Republican party that didn’t even bother to present a platform in the 2020 election; their only goal was to win. Today, we have Republicans like Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who is a vociferous critic of Donald Trump but still says he’ll vote for Orange Julius if he’s the party’s nominee. Why? “I just want Republicans to win,” he says. “That’s all I care about.”

That’s really all you need to know about the Republican party anymore. They don’t care about policies, the Constitution, the country, democracy, or you. They only care about winning.

From Maryland to Maryville, Takoma to Tennessee

How’s this for a change? I used to live in a district represented by Jamie Raskin, who spent 25 years as a constitutional law professor before running for Congress. You may remember Rep. Raskin for his work on the Trump impeachment and the January 6 Committee. Raskin is a cancer survivor and politically driven by what he believes is morally right.

Now, I live in a district represented by Tim Burchett, a career politician who’s spent the last 30 years in the Tennessee legislature, as mayor of Knoxville, and in the U.S. House of Representatives. Through that time, he’s gained attention for proposing legislation to legalize eating roadkill without notifying game wardens and demanding information on UFOs because he “doesn’t trust the government.” Burchett is also one of the eight representatives who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy earlier this year.

Yes, I live in a ruby-red district.

What’s become apparent to me since I came here is just how successful the GOP has been in demonizing the federal government. People here see no value in the federal government or the Constitution. I mean that literally. They see the U.S. government as the enemy. They understand the Constitution as a document that is only valuable in its ability to serve their personal needs; anything in it that serves others’ needs should be scrapped.

Here’s an example of how easy and pervasive this sentiment is:

My wife was recently test-driving a new car. She asked the salesperson, who was sitting in the back seat, what a particular icon on the dash meant. He answered, “Oh, that’s a federally mandated thing that’s supposed to stop smog or something, but I’ve never seen anything that shows it really does that. It's just one of those government things. We don’t have smog here. You can just turn it off.”

I then explained that the icon was a feature that shuts off the engine while the car is idling to reduce emissions and conserve fuel. I resisted the urge to inform the salesman that average visibility in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a significant tourist draw and a driver of the local economy, has decreased by 40% in winter and 80% in summer over the last 50 years.

Perhaps I should have said something. It’s hard to know. Moving from a town known as “the People’s Republic” to one where people think the government is the enemy (but repeatedly elect a do-nothing career politician) has been the most challenging part of this transition.

Okay. I’m done. I promise I won’t make this space a political diatribe on a regular basis.