Welcome to the party

August 21, 2006

As part of my ongoing fascination with Republicans-turned-Democrats this election year, I’m pleased to note that a prominent Nebraska official has given up on the GOP.

Just days after the state auditor jumped the Republican ship, [Nebraska] state Democrats nominated her to run as their candidate for auditor in November.

“I appreciate the Democratic Party’s support,” State Auditor Kate Witek told the Grand Island Independent. She said her switch was about good government, not just keeping her job.

Witek, 51, switched parties Wednesday, criticizing the Republican Party for what she called a lack of interest in solving the state’s problems. Witek was Republican Tom Osborne’s running mate in the gubernatorial primary and lost that bid.

Keep the context in mind here. Nebraska is one of the most solidly-Republican states in the country, and Witek was nearly the GOP’s candidate for lieutenant governor just two months ago. Leaving the Republicans now at the state level is particularly odd timing considering the fact that Gov. Dave Heineman (R) is going to cruise to re-election. But Witek made the switch anyway, saying, “I got to the point where it seemed the Republican Party was only looking at controlling all the offices instead of looking at resolving all the problems challenging this state.”

In the broader context, Daily Kos’ McJoan noticed an interesting trend among the latest higher-profile party-switchers: they’re all Republicans becoming Dems, and they’re all in “red” states.

Indeed, she listed examples from Kansas, Oklahoma, and Idaho, and I’d add Virginia and South Carolina to the list. McJoan said:

Anecdotes don’t make trends, but it’s still an interesting phenomenon. A quick and dirty Google News search didn’t turn up any high profile Democratic defections.

The fact that this trend is happening in very “red” states is of particular interest. If Northeastern Republicans decided that it was time to make the switch to extend their careers, it’d be easier to explain. But these anecdotes highlight officials whose political fortunes would probably be better if they stuck with the GOP, but they’re becoming Dems anyway.

We’re not just talking about some candidates for dog-catcher, either. In Kansas, no less than the former state GOP chairman became Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ (D) running mate. In Nebraska, Witek was a leading Lt. Gov. candidate two months ago. In Virginia, the Dem’s U.S. Senate candidate, James Webb, was a Republican and Reagan administration official.

To reiterate a point I raised a few weeks ago, I appreciate the fact that these newcomers may cause some dissension, especially if they’re inclined to resist any effort to move the Dems even slightly to the left.

But I nevertheless consider this an inherent net gain for the party. We’re picking up new leaders in states where we want (need) to be more competitive and the defections are a reminder to dejected Republicans in those states that there’s nothing wrong with giving up on a party that’s given up on them.

For other reasonable Republicans who no longer recognize their party, I have a message: come on over; the water’s fine.

Anecdotes don’t make trends, but it’s still an interesting phenomenon. A quick and dirty Google News search didn’t turn up any high profile Democratic defections.

How do we score Lieberman?

  • But these anecdotes highlight officials whose political fortunes would probably be better if they stuck with the GOP, but they’re becoming Dems anyway.

    Not necessarily. In Kansas, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General was a Republican who would have had to face a tough primary fight against the far-right and well-funded Phill Kline. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ running mate was a Republican legislator, who, as near as I could tell, saw the Republicans just couldn’t beat her in the gubernatorial race. Almost every one of the moderate Republican defections from Kansas are spurred on by the moderate-radical conservative fight the Republicans have been fighting for years.

    In Kansas, Nebraska, and rural Missouri, there is very little difference between Republicans and Democrats. This is just another way to seek elected office without going through a bruising, unsuccessful primary.

  • prm,

    Exactly. Nebraska’s Democrats are for the most part Republican-lite.
    It’s about the only way they can survive in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 40 years.

    Still, it’s nice to see an article in the LAT about my home state that isn’t about meth, teen pregnancy, anti-abortion/gay fanatics, or football.

    Okay, on that last one, I should say “football PLAYERS getting arrested.”

    Go Big Red

  • I think the bigger question is do we want Republicans turned Democrats running and winning for the Democratic party.

    I cannot imagine that just because they changed the R to the D next to their names means they’ll tow the party line and be generally good for the Democrats.

    Sure it is refreshing to see Republican’s jumping ship like rats on the Titanic, but do you want them playing [and winning] for our side?

  • As someone who lives in the Kansas City area, I pay pretty close attention to the races on both sides of State Line Road (for the geographically challenged, that’d be KS and MO). And, to be honest, I’m not all that sure that some of the defections aren’t just due to electability.

    Sebelius is popular in KS because she’s not really that far left — if she were, there’s no way in hell residents of that state would’ve voted for her. The state is so incredibly rural that the whole “family values/good Christian” angle plays well (see: Brownback). Same goes for the southern sections of Missouri.

    But there’s also a good dose of common sense in both areas. People can tell when they’re just being played and/or pandered to, and that’s what I think has a lot to do with the defections, at least in KS. The people see so many on the far-right as hypocrites, and that has, in turn, made being a GOP candidate a poison pill.

    To be honest, I’m a bit torn on the issue. Sure, it’s great that the left is getting this infusion of what could be termed “moderates,” but I’m just not buying it yet. The Democratic party isn’t as far left as many think (or the press makes it to be), and all this will do is pull it to the right. Not sure if that’s such a good thing.

  • Part of what we’re seeing on the right is the unraveling of unholy alliances that helped republicans move from minority to majority party. Robber.barron and Unholy Moses seem to suggest that something similar may be happening on the left — odd alliances in opposition to the repubs in power — that helps Democrats in the short term but unravels in the long term. I wonder the same thing.

  • Before we get too happy (okay some posters here have raised voices of caution) let’s try to remember that the Palm Beach Butterfly Ballots of 2000 that lost Gore the election were created by a Republican turned Democrat for the sole purpose of winning the country elections official job. She has since returned to her lair with the Republican’t party.

    And for another example, where exactly is James Webb? I haven’t seen or heard an ad for him. Is he just hoping George Felix Allen Jr is going to implode? (Not that that is an impossibility 😉 )

    A little vetting by the party might be worth something here.

    Though I suppose in Kansas and Nebraska, any port in a storm 🙁

  • I understand the concern that at some point the big tent becomes so big that it no longer stands (or, more accurately, stands for anything). At the same time, however, politics is a majoritarian affair under this country’s rules. Adding numbers is how you obtain power; obtaining power is how you effect change. If the pure left position is good for 38%, in some ways its good for nothing.

    The real benefit of the party changes, however, is the meme: the Republican party has moved so far to the extreme right, it is leaving even its Red State leaders behind. It is so out of the mainstream that high profile Red State Republicans feel closer to the Democratic party. That is a message with huge value in the debate — after years of it being totally “uncool” in the general public to be a “liberal,” it now moves toward making it “uncool” to be a conservative. You want to see how fast Rove’s “permanent majority” falls apart? Start by making it socially acceptable to say out loud that the Republican party is a bunch of greedy thugs. Trust me – the rest will follow.

  • I’ve seen James Webb signs on the roadside here (I live in central Virginia) but they’ve only just appeared recently and, to be honest, I can’t remember if they said which party he was running for – though that seems to be the norm these days.

  • At the same time, however, politics is a majoritarian affair under this country’s rules. Adding numbers is how you obtain power; obtaining power is how you effect change. If the pure left position is good for 38%, in some ways its good for nothing.
    –Zeitgeist

    While I see your point, the question is: Will it be Democratic change?

    Most of the people who are switching seem more like what people call a “Goldwater Conservative.” Since I’m only in my mid-30s, I really have no idea what the hell that means. All I can glean is that it’s a Republican who actually believes in fiscal responsibility and doesn’t want the Christian right controlling the party. But I could be wrong.

    The problem with all these defections is the fact that these people aren’t really Democrats. I mean, I can call my dogs “cats,” but that doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly start meowing and using a litter box.

    Just because someone calls themselves a Democrat doesn’t make them one.

  • This country has never experience or understood a significant true “left” political party — Socialists had some limited, local success back in the 1920s. Nor, for that matter, have we had much of a true “right” party — the “America Firsters” of the 1930s is about all, other than the rhythmic conflation of religious revivalism and self-satisfied jingoism.

    Maybe it’s because we had such a long Colonial existence prior to Independence, or maybe it’s because we were virtually unassailable through nearly all our existence as a nation, but we have tended to stay relentlessly right-of-center through all our history, and we’ll probably continue that way for the foreseeable future. Party-switching, like that described here, is not so much the beginning of a new wave as it is individual switchers being alive to the death of the abandoned party and responding accordingly. Would you want to run with the likes of Katherine Harris? For the most part it’s not the magnetism of the candidates or policies as it is their repugnance. This, incidentally, suits the corporation suits just fine: the “shift” is no threat to the boys in boardroom.

  • Up through the 1970’s the Democratic party enjoyed an impregnable electoral majority by being a “big tent” of northern liberals and southern conservatives. This was far from a comfortable alliance. It led to a lot of compromises that I recall disliking at the time, and to my general feeling (from a British perspective) that the Democratic House and Senate were forever held back from developing decent social policies due to the need to compromise with their own more conservative members. Hindsight lets me see that the glacially slow social progress nonetheless made some very important gains, and that overall Democratic power kept mainstream republicans to about the restrained conservatism of Nixon and made Rockefeller a realistic Republican candidate for president. Those stripes of republicans look like raving leftist loonies in comparison to the ones we’ve got now. Republican control has been such an unmitigated disaster that I’m ready to take in any disgusted moderate Republicans even if it makes the party less attractive to me. We can figure out how to deal with overly conservative Democrats once the Dems regain the reins. And anyway, the old “throw money at whatever weapons Sam Nunn wants to keep him happy” model was not too bad nor too expensive compared to the havoc that Bush & his Republicans are wreaking today.

  • “Daily Kos’ McJoan noticed an interesting trend….”

    Ok, now I know what I want for my birthday. A line on DailyKos saying, “The Carpetbagger Report’s Curmudgeon noticed an interesting trend…..”, or something to that effect.

    That would be so cool. 🙂

  • Witek made an important point that Republicans aren’t interested in good government, just in keeping themselves in power. The inherent fallacy in today’s Republican party is that they don’t believe government works and are trying to weaken government to the point that the average citizen can push it around for their own self-serving needs. Until Repubs get the fact that government must be able to function effectively and do its job, they will leave local and state officials hung out to dry in their wake. Repubs are not for efficient governance, which is what gets them elected on the local level, they are really for ineffective government that doesn’t accomplish the will of the people.

  • Places like Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and parts of Missouri will remain safely “conservative” whether there are Republicans, newly proclaimed Democrats or lifelong Democrats elected. It’s just the nature of their constituency. A pro-choice, pro-immigrant, pro-gay rights candidate has no shot of winning election there. The best we can hope for in this part of the country is moderates or conservative Democrats.

    In Missouri, Democratic Senate Candidate Claire McCaskill is running far more conservatively that I’d like, but I’ll certainly support her over Sen. Jim Talent. The Democratic candidate for Kansas Attorney General, Paul Morrison, has been a long-time prosecutor in suburban Kansas City and he’d make a great attorney general despite his Republican affiliations.

    The point is this: There are some very decent Democrats who wouldn’t pass a party litmus test, but they do fairly well by their constituents and the country. Demanding purity to the party’s positions is condemning large swaths of the country to Republican control for a long long time.

  • No one has said it yet, so I will. There is a kind of conservatism that has been occasionally practiced by Republicans (notice the lack of the ‘t) that is actually good for the country. That is a applied skeptism of Government that constricts its growth in unwanted areas, a fiscal conservatism that balances taxes with expenditures, and a thoughtful foreign policy that matches commitments with resources.

    If we can get more of these types of Republicans into power, or pull them into the Democratic party, is is not a bad thing.

  • Didn’t I just read that JonBenet’s killer was also thinking about a change of party? No, wait, that was sex, not party. Sorry for the interruption.

  • Lance: Agreed. Those old-time conservative ideals you mention are reasonable, balancing forces and why I’ve typically thought of myself as a centrist — except when Republicans are in power. During Nixon/Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush, I found myself swinging left, only to swing center again during Carter and Clinton. I’m sure that says something but I won’t take the time to figure out exactly what.

  • Ok, I’ll resort to my usual mantra: it is all about the vote to organize the chamber. In other words, if Nebraska or Kansas will not, in the foreseeable future, elect a true liberal, I’d still rather they elect the lesser conservative of two choices, and one who will caucus with the Ds than the Rs — because that puts the party in power so the more progressive Ds in blue states now chair committees, etc. Really, I have trouble seeing the downside. It think it is overly optimistic to expect we suddenly can so convince people that progressivism is the truth and the light that we are at 50%+1 in every state, county and city and can afford to limit entry to the tent. At least not in any near or medium term. (It remains, however, a wonderful long-term goal).

  • Zeitgeist–
    Don’t get me wrong — I’d rather have a moderate anything rather than a radical, no matter which side of the political spectrum that person is on … although I prefer those to the left than to the right.

    I guess I’m tempering my enthusiasm because, quite frankly, I just don’t just trust the vast majority of Republicans. For some reason, I get the feeling it’s like some kind of ploy to infiltrate the party and … um … okay. Excuse me while I get some heavier duty foil for my hat. 🙂

    Seriously, though, I just think these people are more worried about getting elected, and see having a (D) after their name as the best way to do so. And, once elected, they’ll just switch back to the (R) and go on doing what they’ve always done: screwing the country.

    Call my cynical …

  • The real benefit of the party changes, however, is the meme

    Yes. There may be some danger in “switch-backs”, or in “Manchurian Candidates” getting into office (or in the media) as Dems and governing (or opining) as rightwing fucktards. However, that’s a danger we already live with, considering candidates like Joe Lieberman, Al From, and other DLC hacks. But the message this sends is unmistakable: “Republicans are unelectable, even in Red states.” Voters who are on the fence (and even some who aren’t) will take that to heart. Many people won’t vote for somebody they KNOW is going to lose, or somebody they KNOW is wildly unpopular. This meme – “Republicans are icky and unelectable – only helps us in that regard. We can deal with the rear-guard action later. Right now, let’s focus on the front: the 2006 elections. Come what may, I want at least one of the houses of Congress in our column at the end of Election Day.

  • Yes, but does it make up for all of us progressives who used to identify loosely with the Democrats but have now written them off for good because we’re so disgusted with their fear-mongering, war-mongering, and unprincipled triangulating?

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