The American Spectator

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG with partisanship. There is not only nothing wrong with division, there is everything to be gained from sharp, line-in-the-sand division over the direction of the country.

Let’s be clear about lessons from not only recent modern politics but American and world history as well. In terms of modern politics the upcoming January 7th gathering at the University of Oklahoma of those who favor so-called “bipartisanship” and “national unity” is in fact nothing more or less than a coming together of latter-day American liberals of a paler hue. They want, in the words of one spokesman, a “bipartisan approach.” Most significantly, the letter the group sent out says that America is “a house divided.”

To which the conservative response should be: excellent. The very phrase a “house divided” comes from a speech by Abraham Lincoln in which Lincoln said that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln was right. Yet were these modern-day Americans shot back in time to Lincoln’s day they would presumably be advising him that yes, slavery is sort of unacceptable, but how about working with all those slavery-supporting Democrats and just banning it in, say, five states instead of eleven? Why not settle for letting South Carolina and Alabama secede from the Union but keeping Florida and Texas? What’s a little bipartisanship and moderation when it comes to the principle of human liberty?

Lincoln would have none of it.

Slavery was morally wrong. Period. There would be no compromise. Period. There would be, to borrow the words of the nowadays surrender-minded Bruce Springsteen, no retreat, no surrender.

This is, of course, the very antithesis of the philosophy that allowed the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” and the avalanche of congressional earmarks that brought a justifiable defeat to the last Republican Congress. “Bipartisanship” is shorthand for “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” It is the heart of horse-trading for votes. My vote for a military invasion of Iraq in return for extra time on the Senate floor and the resulting TV coverage (something Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson once actually charged to then-Senator Al Gore as the Senate prepared to debate the 1991 Gulf War Resolution). Your vote for my highway in return for my support of your federal court house. There is no “there” there other than making everybody feel good. It is the political version of giving trophies to everybody on the third grade soccer team so nobody feels badly. It is the trumpet of timidity.

It is, today, also something else. No one should be fooled for a heartbeat that this new movement pushing bipartisanship is anything other than a would-be Trojan horse for liberalism. Take a look at some of the names of those involved in this venture as reported by the Washington Post: former McGovern campaign manager and Senator Gary Hart (D-CO), former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), former Senator William Cohen (R-ME) who also served Bill Clinton as Secretary of Defense, former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman, a self-proclaimed “Rockefeller Republican” and liberal ex-Iowa GOP Congressman Jim Leach. There is, as the famous phrase goes, not a dime’s worth of intellectual difference between all of these luminaries.

Former Governor Whitman has also penned It’s My Party Too, an ode to liberal Republicanism that says all the too-predictable things liberal and moderate Republicans have been muttering into their Chablis since Nelson Rockefeller lost to Barry Goldwater in the 1964 fight for the GOP nomination. Conservatism is “far right,” far right alienates people and it is simply a loser at the polls. Written frequently in 1964, this kind of political thought once had an audience. But with the successes of the Reagan era and the Gingrich-led takeover of Congress in 1994, something moderate Republicans failed to accomplish in forty years of trying, no one can take the argument seriously anymore. The thought that Governor Whitman and her friends would gather to consider nominating New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg for president not because of his principles but because of his money is telling.

LET’S BE VERY CLEAR.

A lot of these people are the folks who felt Reagan’s approach to ending the Cold War was wrong. These are the people who believed in endless arms control negotiations rather than outright defeating the evil that was the Soviet Union, elevating process over principle. These are the people representing the mindset that told President Gerald Ford he shouldn’t meet with Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn because it would upset the Kremlin — advice Ford took. These are the folks who applauded George H.W. Bush for breaking his pledge not to raise taxes. They belong on the Republican end to the side that rejected Ronald Reagan’s clarion call in 1975 for a party dedicated to “bold colors,” instinctively yearning instead for what Reagan called “the pale pastels.”

Their working model of American politics has proved a continuous failure of policy. Tax hikes — just not so much. Welfare — but not so much. Expand the government — just not so much. They supported, in short, what Barry Goldwater once called “the dime store New Deal.” For Republicans who once listened to them, a string of presidential defeats resulted that ranged from Willkie to Dewey to Ford to Bush I to Dole. Confusing civility with principle they support the tired politics of “getting along” that throughout American history proposed feckless compromise on significant issues ranging from the Civil War to the Cold War. Repeatedly many of these “moderates” in history have demonstrated a troublesome acceptance of restraints on the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness whether it was found in the American South or Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia or Iraq, or, yes, in a woman’s womb. In the latter case many believe fervently in denying the American people the choice of a vote on abortion in their respective states, preferring to leave the decision to unelected judges.

One can only marvel at the political facility that takes a Michael Bloomberg from Democrat to Republican to Independent in the space of eight years. Or the denial of self-described “Rockefeller Republican” Christine Todd Whitman that not even Nelson Rockefeller himself could get nominated and elected to anything outside New York — and even when graced with an appointment to the vice-presidency could not manage a second term nomination. Or the realization that George McGovern’s campaign manager has anything at all in common politically with a Republican Senator from Nebraska who once billed himself as a conservative. One suspects it was not for nothing that Chuck Hagel has decided not to risk a re-election fight.

Doubtless all these individuals flocking to Oklahoma are good and decent people. Former Republican Senator John Danforth, reaching for the old chestnut once hurled at Reagan, claims his party is “appealing to a real meanness.” Yet Danforth seems uncharacteristically obtuse to the idea he appears prepared to support moderation, a philosophy that has historically equivocated on everything from slavery to communism, and that today sees government pork barreling on monumental scales alongside raising taxes as evidence of bipartisanship. Danforth and his potential allies are getting ready to endorse a view of the world so timid it cannot force itself to stand starkly in favor of the most fundamental of human rights and liberties.

This is not leadership. This is spineless equivocation.

p> CONSERVATIVES — AND MODERATES — WOULD do well to remember the following lines John F. Kennedy once approvingly quoted from William Lloyd Garrison, the New England abolitionist. Garrison said this when addressing the politics of moderation: