Why This Former Republican Has a Lot to Teach the Democrats

In the colorful ranks, I have never felt a commitment to former representative of Illinois Gop Jo Walsh. Walsh has never been hit by nostalgia for anti-government tea tangent to nostalgia for nostalgia for consensus a bichandy bidder for many never apostles Trump, from Britta Stevens and Max to ineffective hawthorn Maine Sanar Colins Sasse. As Walsh started his political career as an ideological scandalist, he realizes that Trump’s crisis is that the country had to fight the exit – and that the traditional lives’ liberal gods, such as the courts and the sacred norms of constitutional governance, has largely been perceived by more and more.

Now Walsh, who called himself independent after the defect after Trump from GoP, has announced that he was joining the Democrats. His testimony through Stock of availabilityshould be delayed at the moment when the Democratic Party was in a political desert Without a compass.

Walsh’s main crying is a familiar abstinence that never refrains: Ronald Reagan paraphrased, he did not leave the Republican Party; The party left him. The cult of Trump, Walsh writes, is a deadly threat to our democracy: “Anyone who cares about the Constitution cannot sit next and look like fundamental American values ​​- the rule of law, democracy, pluralism – is attacked. Yes, even conservation. “

But Walsh most realizes that the ransom of the American Democrats room for a seminar. “For democracy and the rule of law, to insist, the Democrats must succeed,” he writes. “I want to help. I want to help the Democrats win. And to win, the Democrats have to fight. I mean really to fight. I’ll say it again: Democrats have to fight.” Here, where Walsh Tea Party is especially useful for the Democratic Party, which operates on the procedural and meritocratic autopilot to hear: “Republicans are fighting to death to win politically, and they always believed that the Democrats would not be.

Criticism Walsh reiterates that another, former Defector GOP: Economist Bruce Bartlet, a former treasured official with the Reagan administration, who called for a GoP drift into authoritarianism during Bush years. Bartlet – my friend who made a closely reflected dissection of GOP As the owner of the cult When I edited Buffler and wrote the usual internet For me in New republic. I always believed that he said he was never knocked out as noticeable. His sin was similar to the early recruits of the US brigade Abrahag Lincoln, who fought with the rise of Francis Franco in Spain, whom the myopic liberals of World War II and the Cold War were rejected as “premature anti -fascists”. Bartlett, breaking up with the anti -democratic and bellied republican party in the early appeals, was essentially premature never a tram in a closed political pantheon.

Bartlet’s defect came for a high professional price. He was fired by the right analytical center where he worked for the previous decade. He was also a deferral at national social events and conveyed long -standing friends; First, an economist’s official on the side of supplies Stephen Moore, who sneaked up the Bartleta Anti-Bush book The Wall Street Journalblurred: “You were right about Bush” at the DC party; It was, Bartlet writesThe last interaction he had with his former colleague.

Bartlet, like Walsh, has long claimed that the Democrats needed to hit Maga with a simple plan to defeat them, not a plan to manage the mehman near them. During Trump’s first term, Bartlet claimed that in order to defeat the authoritarian GP for a long departure, the Democrats needed to take the Republican Party tactics What he came from political age:

During the 1980s and 1990s, a stable stream of Democrats, which became Republicans, followed, followed in the footsteps of Sen. Carolina, transferred in 1964. Republicans were generous for those who crossed the passage. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama and Ben Ner-Karsbell from Colorado was allowed to retain his work experience after going to GoP, bringing this decision except the cost of careers. Unlike this, when Senator Wayne Mors from Oregon moved from the GoP to the Democratic Party in 1955, he lost all his work experience and went below the work experience listLoss of valuable tasks of the committee in this process.

In a similar direction, the Conservatives in the 1950s and 1960s eagerly covered the former Communists such as the Cambers. Political scientist at Brooklyn college Robin says these apostates left were Extremely valuable Because they understood the vulnerabilities of the left much better than the ones they did. When I went to work on the Capitoli hill as a Republican in the 1970s, most of the best political and political parades I could find came from a group of ex -left -wing, related to a small magazine called Public interestEdited by a disposable TROSKYITE Irving Kristol.

Walsh, unlike Bartlet, is still a Conservative of the Hard line-seven, a specialized financial hawk and rights. But he also writes that he “opened my eyes and listened to people who don’t think like me. And doing so, I got a deeper understanding and gratitude for LGBTC -problems, structural racism, the need for compassionate immigration reform, the danger of climate change, and the role must play to help follow the most significant and vulnerable.” However, it attributes most of its political transformation into one central development: “I’m angry.”

I am angry with the ignorant who was lying crazy in a white house that uses its position to only enrich themselves and their thick friends, and the middle -class people and small business owners and twist their chaos. I am angry with all his Hop, my former colleagues who have refused to remain in power. I was angry that he and his supporters have repeatedly lied to their voters year after year, and these good people who lied will feel true pain – and Trump and his, who provide GoP, are not damn. I am angry because the opposition party, the Democratic Party, should be as righteously angry as I am.

Maybe Walsh and Bartlet can create an angry coalition in the Never Trump Coalition and call themselves “anti -fascists held over time.” And now, when they are in line with the Democrats, perhaps democratic leaders can finally absorb and act in their own business lessons.