It is very satisfying to go against the grain with the truth on one’s side. One might begin humming the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Slipping into smugness is not recommended, but it’s privately tempting.
I wrote recently about the historical foundation and record of the Republican Party. Some “differently registered” friends of mine attempted to take me to the woodshed for some of my claims. Unfortunately for them, I’d documented every assertion, and the facts support my words. Annoying things: facts. They can get in the way of what one wishes were true.
I was not a child in 1968 when the Democrats held their Presidential Nominating Convention in Chicago that began to change the party to what it has become today. I was beginning my college junior year. In the subsequent two years, I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Florida with honors, began teaching high school and started in my Master’s Degree Program.
During that period I also attained the legal age for voting at the time – 21 -- and registered as a Democrat. Always attentive to politics, 1968 was the year that burns into my political conscience and set me on the path to participation in the “public square.” The assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Democratic presidential frontrunner Robert Kennedy horrifyingly punctuated the year. The Viet Nam War was escalating and dividing our citizens.
Then there was the spectacle of the Chicago convention. All manner of anti-war protesters, radical leftists and counter-culture rebels clashed in the streets with the Chicago police while the establishment Democrats inside the Convention Center struggled to find an acceptable nominee. Protests. Violence. Arrests. The city seemed run amok.
The admirable Hubert Humphrey was nominated after much negotiation, but lost the national election badly. To Richard Nixon! That was also the year the left started to make strong headway in its takeover of the modern-day Democrat Party.
Four years later, the party nominated George McGovern and politically and intellectually lost me. Oh, and lost the presidential contest again, something clearly more important than losing my loyalty.
Noemie Emery, authotr and journalist, remarked earlier this year, "“Since 1972, when George McGovern's campaign gave us both Warren Beatty and identity politics, the Democratic Party has run on a combination of glitter and grievance. It taps the film, rock and fashion worlds for glamour and money, and meanwhile feigns concern for the victims of race and gender bias, paying them off with a system of quotas, while stoking their long-standing fears.”
Since then, the Democrat Party has presented Americans with the feckless incompetence of the Jimmy Carter administration, the forced moderation of the Bill Clinton administration (thanks to the 1994 election tsunami that brought Republicans to power in both houses of Congress) and the frightening economic and socially divisive mess of the current Barack Obama administration. The Reagan-Bush years were a time of economic recovery, prosperity that continued through the Clinton years and well into the George W. Bush years. A couple of recessions during that period were brief, mild and enjoyed strong recoveries.
In my opinion, none of this occurred due to leftist policies. What I do know is nothing that has happened politically and economically since 1972 has inspired me to realign with the Democrat Party. While I maintained my registration as a Democrat through the '80s, this was because of the pragmatic understanding that most local and state races in Florida were decided in the Democratic primaries.
If I wanted a say in my representation—and I did, I was pretty much held hostage.
On the day in 1990 when I switched parties, I was not only delighted that Florida was truly becoming a two-party state, but glad to leave behind a political party in which I was embarrassed to claim membership.
I have friends and family who are both fine people and Democrats. One doesn’t necessarily rule out the other. But I do wonder, if one is registered to the political party whose ideals are more Marxist/statist than representative democracy/individual freedom, how does one square that with being an American if one believes in the America envisioned and structured by our Founders? Just wondering.