It took only the single tap of a computer key, and just like that I'd exited the Republican Party after 30 years of active membership. The context might sound impulsive, but I'd been thinking of becoming an independent for a long time. I just hadn't expected that a trip to renew my driver's license would mark the end.
Just before my photo was snapped, I was asked if I wanted to register to vote. For me, the question was borderline offensive. I first registered after turning 18 in the spring of 1980 and haven't missed an election since. And I'm not just talking presidential races. I mean all elections. Congress, town council, school board, whatever.
"I'm already registered," I offered. Next came the unexpected question of whether I wished to change my political affiliation. I'm not sure why that is asked of someone renewing a driver's license, and I question whether it is even appropriate for most. But in my case, it was the only impetus I needed.
Years ago, I grew tired of having my television or radio introduction accompanied by a label, with some implied expectation that what would then come from my mouth were the party talking points. That was me 26 years ago, when I was the youngest elected member of the state delegation to the Republican National Convention, but not today. I'm not sure if I left the Republican Party or the party left me. All I know is that I no longer feel comfortable.
The national GOP is a party of exclusion and litmus tests, dominated on social issues by the religious right, with zero discernible outreach by the national party to anyone who doesn't fit neatly within its parameters. Instead, the GOP has extended itself to its fringe while throwing under the bus long-standing members like New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, a McCain-Palin supporter in 2008 who told me she voted with her Republican leadership 90 percent of the time before running for Congress last fall.
Which is not to say I feel comfortable in the Democratic Party, either. Weeks before Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh's announcement that he will not seek reelection, I noted the centrist former governor's words to the Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib. Too many Democrats, Bayh said in that interview, are "tone-deaf" to Americans' belief that the party had "overreached rather than looking for consensus with moderates and independents."
Where political parties once existed to create coalitions and win elections, now they seek to advance strict ideological agendas. In today's terms, it's hard to imagine the GOP tent once housing such disparate figures as conservative Barry Goldwater and liberal New Yorker Jacob Javits, while John Stennis of Mississippi and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts coexisted as Democratic contemporaries.
Collegiality is nonexistent today, and any outreach across an aisle is castigated as weakness by the talking heads who constantly stir a pot of discontent. So vicious is the political climate that within two years, Sen. John McCain has gone from GOP standard-bearer to its endangered-species list. All of which leaves homeless those of us with views that don't stack up neatly in any ideological box the way we're told they should.
Consider that I've long insisted on the need to profile in the war against terrorists. I believe that if someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has actionable intelligence on future terrorism, you try the least coercive methods to extract it but ultimately stop at damn near nothing to get what you need to save American lives. I want the U.S. military out of Iraq, but into Pakistan. I'm for capital punishment. I think our porous borders need to be secured before we determine how to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already within them. Sounds pretty conservative. But wait.
I think that in 2008, the GOP was wrong to adopt a party platform that maintained a strict opposition to abortion without at least carving out exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother's life. I was appalled that legislators tried to decide Terri Schiavo's end-of-life plan. I don't care if two guys hook up any more than they should care about my heterosexual lifestyle. And I still don't know what to think about climate change.
I think President Obama is earnest, smart, and much more centrist than his tea party caricature suggests. He has never been given a fair chance to succeed by those who openly crow about their desire to see him fail (while somehow congratulating one another on their relative patriotism). I know he was born in America, isn't a socialist, and doesn't worship in a mosque. I get that he inherited a minefield. Still, the level of federal spending concerns me. And he never closed the deal with me that health insurance is a right, not a privilege. But I'm not folding the tent on him. Not now. Not with the nation fighting two wars while its economy still teeters on the brink of collapse.
All of which leaves me in a partisan no-man's-land, albeit surrounded by many others, especially my neighbors. By quitting the GOP, I have actually joined the largest group of American voters. According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 39 percent of Americans identify themselves as independents -- compared with 32 percent who say they are Democrats and 26 percent who are self-described members of the GOP. Nowhere is this more pronounced than locally, where a shift away from the Republican Party has taken place in the four bellwether counties surrounding Philadelphia.
I will miss casting a ballot in the spring, as current state election law prohibits unaffiliated voters from voting in GOP or Democratic primary elections. Instead, I'll join the others who bide their time until fall, when we can temper the extremes of both parties.
"My decision should not be interpreted for more than it is: a very difficult, deeply personal one. . . . I value my independence. I am not motivated by strident partisanship or ideology."
Those are Bayh's words, not mine. But he was speaking for both of us.
Cross-posted with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Be that as it may, yes...President Obama is what we've lacked for a long time in the office - an intelligent, learned, mature person. It is a measure of how insane large segments of the country have become that such a moderate (even mildly right) centrist looks like a bomb-throwing anarchist straight of the Russian Revolution or 1848.
I prefer fiscal responsibility, and have always believed ib PayGo but I recognize that getting out of the hole that we are in requires government to create some demand. It is unfortunate that we have to borrow the money to create the temporary demand there really is no sensible alternative.
I learned my economics from Greenspan many years ago and it saddened me to see him refuse to see the obvious signs of abuse in the mortgage market and REFUSE to exercise his responsibility (and authority) to regulate .
The Reagan reality of a belief in fiscal responsibility (even while running up debt greater than all previous presidents) has been twisted into myths of ever smaller taxes while shrinking not just safety nets but the necessary regulation to protect the citizens from all kinds of hazzards from drugs, vehicle safety and consumer fraud. In fact, the GOP and the Tea Baggers feed off of those who are actually abusing them.
I'm not comfortable socializing 1/7th of the economy, especially when so much of a majority is against it. Where else, but a few places, in the world can you get emergency treatment in a hospital if you don't have insurance?
Just how has power corrupted those who we now see in those positions? If your boss had an idea that a very small minority of your co-workers agree with, and this boss asked you to "push it through at any cost", jeapordizing your job and credibility, would you go along with it? Not me. I don't care which side of the aisle would do it,; nobody is going to co-opt my principles or ideals to better themselves if I don't agree with the premise.
Maybe the independents and the tea party have ideas worth looking at. Don't bet against others painting them as racists, kooks, hillbillies, homophobes... as they revert to co-opt their credibility rather than compete in the public discourse of opinions.
Of course, there is one burden to your new role as an independent. You have to read... A LOT! You have to find sources that filter out the agenda of either side to come up with real data to form your own opinions. That is no small task in this media environment. I'm a big fan of BBC World News and PBS' News Hour. Those are the only relatively unbiased forms of news out there. Good luck to you, and feel proud of yourself as an intellectual and reasonable American citizen.
One of the positive aspects of being an Independent is that you feel like you own your soul, and are no longer beholden to a party. We now have 3 major political powers in this country. We have the deplorable and immoral Democrat party. Then we have the Republican party, which is somewhat better than the Dem party. And now the most powerful party/group has taken it's rightful place in history, the Independents.