Analysis/Opinion
I was raised a Democrat. My parents, like most people of their Greatest Generation (Depression and World War II) were Truman Democrats. As did most of the children of that era, I followed in their footsteps.
The first election in which I could vote was 1972. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Richard Nixon or George McGovern, though my parents did vote for the South Dakota senator who lost all but Massachusetts. He couldn’t even carry his home state.
In 1976 I voted for Jimmy Carter. I was six years into a 22-year military career, and he turned me into a Republican. As Ronald Reagan said, I did not leave the Democrat Party; the Democrat Party left me.
Despite my estrangement from the Democrats at the time, there was still room in the party for a Scoop Jackson, a Sam Nunn, and a Phil Gramm. Those men were great but now-forgotten legislators who claimed the mantle of the middle and working classes. They were anti-communist and patriotic. They were committed to free speech and freedom of religion.
Those days are long gone. Today’s party would have no place for Harry Truman or John Kennedy. It didn’t even have room for Phil Gramm. He became a Republican in 1983.
It is now the party of rich bi-coastal liberals who disparage those who grow their food and make things work — the “deplorables” clinging to their guns and religion.
More distressing is the sad fact that the Democrat Party has become the anti-Constitution party. Of course, progressives, who have long dominated the Democrat Party, have never been fond of the Constitution as drafted by the Founders and Framers, who saw it as a framework for sharing power within a democratic republic.
The Founders and Framers established a document in the Constitution that has stood the test of time for 234 years, but the Democrats want to essentially scrap it. (Painting: 'Signing the Constitution,' Howard Chandler Christy, 1940)
It has been proven time and time again: This is the only form of government capable of protecting the liberty and natural rights of citizens.
Founding progressives such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, on the other hand, saw the Constitution, with its separation of powers and federalism, as an obstacle to their enterprise of using government to solve the country’s social problems. Its checks and balances could not accommodate the necessarily far-reaching new programs and agencies to achieve that goal.
Progressives nonetheless paid obeisance to the document, arguing only that its interpretation must change with the times. For fifty years, they have argued it is a “living” instrument of government, subject to reinterpretation.
Now the Democrats are going further, happily attacking the Constitution itself: They contend the Constitution is “not sufficiently democratic,” as illustrated by such elements as the Electoral College and the makeup of the Senate, in which each state, no matter how large or small, gets two senators.
It is the party of dueling victimization narratives: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall/Who is the most oppressed of all?” It is the party of blatant anti-Semitism. It is the party of unrestricted abortion against which no opposition will be tolerated. It is the party of socialist policies that have destroyed prosperity across the globe.
The clearest example of this last point is the party’s opposition to the provision of abundant and relatively cheap energy as a generator of economic growth. Thanks to technological innovations such as fracking and multidirectional drilling, the United States is now the number one producer of natural gas and oil in the world.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stood in the well of the Senate Monday and tongue-lashed the Democrats for holding up passage of the economic rescue package over progressive wish-list items like the Green New Deal and eliminating 'corporate welfare.' (Photo: Fox News)
Our nation achieved that status after only two and a half years under President Donald J. Trump. We achieved that status despite the policies of the Obama administration, which, in thrall of the radical environmentalists and “green” energy, rent-seeking, crony capitalists, engaged in nothing short of a war on oil, gas and coal.
But the Democratic Party has now gone farther, paying fealty to the “Green New Deal” a requirement for any Democrat with presidential aspirations. Unbelievably — at least it should be — they are trying to stuff the entire Green New Deal into the $1.6 trillion economic package now stalled in the U.S. Senate.
Among the measures the Democrats will try to force down America’s throat are reduction of the airline industry’s “carbon footprint,” grossly expanded tax credits for wind and solar power, “special treatment” for Big Labor — of course, because Big Labor keeps the Democrats well-funded. That is just to name a few.
Not only that, they want to strip what they call “corporate welfare” out of the bill, as though the aircraft, auto, chemical, oil and gas industries are some kind of self-sustaining monoliths that don’t need to help through hard economic times. They need to keep their employees, keep their supply lines feeding into them and keep the economy running, just as much as we need small businesses to do the same.
This is not the Democrat Party of my parents, who were hard-working farmers. They would not recognize the party today.
The Democratic Party was pulled sharply to the left during the Obama administration. It is poised to continue tacking left in 2020. The question is whether a Democratic candidate who is acceptable to the party’s radical base, as represented by such individuals as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, can appeal to a broad, national, constitutional majority, as required by our system.
I don’t think so. I will happily watch the Democrats commit suicide this fall.
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