Wednesday, June 6, 2001

El Niños, Rhinos, and party loyalties

By AMY RILEY
One Citizen's Perspective

So this is the week that the U.S.S. Washington will list dramatically to the left. You can almost hear the ship's furniture as it shifts slowly at first, but comes crashing in the end to a big political heap to be sorted and righted by Sen. Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota), the new Senate majority leader, and his deck hands.

What are these winds of change, and what is the system they foretell? It all depends on the undercurrents and the temperature of the water. Are we building to a political El Niño, or is this just a nominal wind shift at sea? It has all the makings of a political epic, but there's not nearly enough guts and glory in all of Washington to make it so.

My bet is "business as usual." The average American won't even realize a ripple of difference anyway when the Democrats take over the Senate. But the shift does give up a few secrets in the shifting.

First, the Republican defector, Sen. Jeffords of Vermont, has voted like a Democrat all along. It is what caused him to be squeezed in the Republican Party vice in the first place. It was allegedly the squeezing from the White House that set him off on his political tantrum. Fundamentally he wants to vote his conscience, which may or may not adhere to any party line.

That I can respect if he has conveyed his predisposition to those who put him in office and his conscience tends to reflect theirs. Ethically, though, a good man would have come to terms with himself and his constituents at election time, not mid-season, and not at a time when party representation in the Senate was a 50-50 split. What could have been a stand on principle becomes instead a stand on politics. Business as usual, don't you think?

The second secret is that for years Republicans just couldn't seem to play the game as tightly as Democrats did. Democrats stuck together come hell or high water, and their payoff was power. This year Republicans started playing it like Democrats, calling errant senators in for pointed meetings on party-line voting, and what did they get for their efforts? A loss of power. So what does that tell us?

It tells me that most Democrats who register themselves as Democrats really believe their party line. They tend to be more purist and idealistic in their political views. When they veer from the party platform, as our own Sen. Zell Miller regularly does, they are hailed as bipartisan and public policy trailblazers. They are reaching across the aisles to serve the principle of compromise for the sake of getting something accomplished for the American people.

This is not true for Republicans. Why? The answer is twofold.

I think some people register as Republicans to get elected in their largely conservative districts, but really don't have a sense of loyalty to the principles of the party. These people know they are not Republicans, and their deception is deliberate. I think Fayette County has a pretty big problem in this regard.

Those of you who are doing it know who you are. And those of us who lean towards a truly conservative view of governance know who you are, too. So when these "RhINOs," Republicans in name only, vote Democratic they're seen as traitors, but they are more like masqueraders liars, if you will.

The second half of the answer reveals the biggest problem for the Republican party. In the years since Reagan left office, as the Democratic Party has become more and more socialist in nature, the Republican Party has become the dumping ground for any political mindset that is not Democratic. The range of beliefs represented is so divergent, there can't really be a "party line."

These people are Republicans because the two-party system is all that we have at present, and since the Democratic Party does not represent them, they have no other choice. When they vote against the party line, they are not really traitors either, they are really just people without a party. The Republicans "accepted" them for their numerical value. They counted towards the now-defunct majority which gave the real Republicans the coveted committee chairs.

When the real Republicans got bossy and dogmatic, and tried to get these "accepted" Republicans to vote like true Republicans, they threw down a gauntlet that caused the Washington ship to roll off keel.

And that brings me back to Jeffords, the "turncoat," and the prospects of a political El Niño. I don't know whether Jeffords was a "RhINO" or an "accepted" Republican. Either way, he wasn't a real Republican.

A political El Niño could occur if and when the two-party system ever gave way to a true three-party system or a no-party system. When elected officials vote on pure conscience and truly represent their constituents, and stop buying and selling votes for the numerical value of party voting, the winds of change would really blow in Washington, which probably won't happen any time soon if ever.

In the meantime, if two parties is all we have, and if the Republicans want to stay in the game, they're going to have to come to terms with themselves and their fellow Republicans. Who are we, and what is our party line going to be?

[Your comments are welcome at: ARileyFreePress@aol.com.]

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