A former conservative Republican state senator in Wisconsin has come up with a ingenious way to help elect more conservatives to the Wisconsin State Legislature.
Run them as Democrats.
With the unpopularity of the Republican Party at an all time high and after years of futility trying to elect Republicans candidates in heavily Democratic districts, former state senator Tom Reynolds of Milwaukee has started an organization called "Clean Sweep Wisconsin" which intends to run and support a slate of conservative candidates against incumbent Democratic state Assembly and Senate members in the fall open primary.
This is tactic may or may not work, depending on voter turnout of course. But it does indicate that there's a growing faction within the Democratic Party that may very well in time become a de facto political party on its own and may satisfy the need that many voters have for a new party:
Conservative Democrats.
Ever since the 2006 election, Conservative Democrats have been on the rise. Once hunted to the brink of extinction in the polarizing politics of 1990s and half the millennial decade to the point where the buffoonish Zell Miller was their supposed champion, Conservative Democrats won elections to the U.S. Senate House of Representatives and the Senate to restore both chambers to their party's control.
Being a Conservative Democrat does not necessarily mean one is an ideological conservative or think or promotes the non-existent "conservative movement." Such Democrats take stands on issue that are reflective of the districts they are elected in: against gun control, against abortion, against unlimited immigration and homosexual marriage. They're very much anti-free traders. Many, especially the noted "Blue Dog" Democrats, are conservative when it comes to spending and some more culturally conservative or conservative in style like Virginia's Jim Webb or Montana's Jon Tester. Although most prominent in the South, one can find almost anywhere. Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson and Minnesota Congressman Colin Peterson are two Conservative Democrats from the Midwest. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is a black Conservative Democrat.
Conservative Democrats were once a de facto political party way back when. From the time of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration through 1990s, Conservative Democrats were a powerful faction in the party and tried to put the breaks on the most radical portions of the New Deal and were stalwarts in opposition to Civil Rights. They were far more effective in their opposition than the minority Republicans were. It was Conservative Democrats who drove out Henry Wallace from the Vice-Presidency, they ran Strom Thurmond for President in 1948 and backed George Wallace in 1968 and they helped to sink the presidential fortunes of Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern. In the 1970s the definition of Conservative Democrats broaden to include not just Dixiecrats but also Northern and Midwest Catholics and Jews affected by the issues of busing, support for Israel, foreign policy and abortion. This manifested itself in the candidacy of Scoop Jackson and incubated the neoconservative movement.
All this began to change in the mid-1960s. Barry Goldwater became the first GOP presidential candidate to carry Deep South states like Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana since Reconstruction. Strom Thurmond changed parties and didn't suffer for it. Republicans were being elected in districts that reflecting growing suburban areas. And when George Wallace faded from the scene, a new force arose that acted as powerful magnet for Conservative Democrats to become Republicans: Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, himself a former Democrat, said that it was okay to switch parties and vote for him and other likeminded Republican candidates, because the national Democrats were taken over by Yankee radicals. "I didn't leave my party, my party left Me." was their battle cry. And pretty soon, not only were they leaving the party on the presidential level, which they had been doing for years, but also the Congressional, state and local levels as well. This trend, coinciding with the retirement of many older Conservative Democratic politicians and the switching of others to get with the winning team, saw the number of Conservative Democrats shrink accordingly. Other trends were working against them as well. The polarization of politics in the Clinton era made it hard for Democrats, even conservative ones, to stand for election in areas where Clinton was definitely unpopular. Party organization basically collapsed in many parts of the country. And conservative intellectuals, pundits and radio talk-show hosts basically demanded that all conservatives run in the same party i.e. the Republican Party, or be scorned.
The problem was they were trying to create a parliamentary party without a parliament. Parliamentary parties around the world may very well be homogenous on the issues or in their backgrounds because the have to be in order to carry out their mandate after winning an election. But in the U.S. parties developed as collection of different interests whether economic, racial, religious or regional. They've have always had to balance those interests through compromise and consensus. A party may have a few basic beliefs that unite all the factions, but ideology never entered into the discussion until the 1960s and 70s when young liberal and conservative activists and their allies in the media and academia demanded that all party members begin to tow ideological lines and punished those who didn't. Thus by the year 2000 you had Republican dominated red states and Democratic dominated blue states because the old Conservative Democrats (and likewise Liberal Republicans) were all but eliminated.
But Conservative Democrats came back largely because Republican mismanagement of the war, the economy and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They came back because DNC Chairman Howard Dean committed the party to a 50 state strategy instead of an 18-state strategy and has rebuilt the party in many red states and they came back because younger liberal bloggers shed their ideological hang-ups and welcomed and even helped wit the elections of Conservative Democrats like new Congressman Travis Childers of Mississippi and Don Cazayoux of Louisiana. Now Conservative Democrats are popping up all over the place, sometimes unexpected as Bob Conley, a former Republican committeeman from South Carolina and a Ron Paul supporter, switched parties to run as a Democrat and upset the party establishment's candidate in the primary and now has better shot of upsetting Sen. Lindsay Graham than did the conservative candidate in the GOP primary Buddy Witherspoon did.
The ground, however, is still tenuous. The Republicans will especially fight tooth and nail against Conservative Democrats because their reemergence threatens them with minority party status once again. Conservative Democrats still have to figure out how to fund their campaigns to remain conservative, otherwise they'll be depended on union and EMILY's list money that has a tendency of pulling politicians to the left and they have temper their ambitions for power because it's the more liberal Democratic caucus that elects committee chairmen and that also is pull away from conservatism as well. "Potomac Fever" has tripped up many a conservative Democrat in the past.
That's why it was a good sign to see other Conservative Democrats in the House provide money and political support to help elect Childers and Cazayoux. It also its good to see Conservative Democrats recognize themselves as new power bloc within the Congress that can temper the party's radical liberals, temper any kind of radicalism from a potential Obama Administration far more effectively than any shattered Republican Party can. And culturally, as party gravitates towards a more upscale, professional and cosmopolitan voting base, Conservative Democrats are going to be the only ones to contest the Republicans in downscale rural areas from Appalachia to the Deep South to the Near West and do so from a populist point of view when comes to economic issues.
A powerful Conservative Democratic Party could very emerge as more than just a mere faction of a major party in the years to come.
Run them as Democrats.
With the unpopularity of the Republican Party at an all time high and after years of futility trying to elect Republicans candidates in heavily Democratic districts, former state senator Tom Reynolds of Milwaukee has started an organization called "Clean Sweep Wisconsin" which intends to run and support a slate of conservative candidates against incumbent Democratic state Assembly and Senate members in the fall open primary.
This is tactic may or may not work, depending on voter turnout of course. But it does indicate that there's a growing faction within the Democratic Party that may very well in time become a de facto political party on its own and may satisfy the need that many voters have for a new party:
Conservative Democrats.
Ever since the 2006 election, Conservative Democrats have been on the rise. Once hunted to the brink of extinction in the polarizing politics of 1990s and half the millennial decade to the point where the buffoonish Zell Miller was their supposed champion, Conservative Democrats won elections to the U.S. Senate House of Representatives and the Senate to restore both chambers to their party's control.
Being a Conservative Democrat does not necessarily mean one is an ideological conservative or think or promotes the non-existent "conservative movement." Such Democrats take stands on issue that are reflective of the districts they are elected in: against gun control, against abortion, against unlimited immigration and homosexual marriage. They're very much anti-free traders. Many, especially the noted "Blue Dog" Democrats, are conservative when it comes to spending and some more culturally conservative or conservative in style like Virginia's Jim Webb or Montana's Jon Tester. Although most prominent in the South, one can find almost anywhere. Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson and Minnesota Congressman Colin Peterson are two Conservative Democrats from the Midwest. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is a black Conservative Democrat.
Conservative Democrats were once a de facto political party way back when. From the time of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration through 1990s, Conservative Democrats were a powerful faction in the party and tried to put the breaks on the most radical portions of the New Deal and were stalwarts in opposition to Civil Rights. They were far more effective in their opposition than the minority Republicans were. It was Conservative Democrats who drove out Henry Wallace from the Vice-Presidency, they ran Strom Thurmond for President in 1948 and backed George Wallace in 1968 and they helped to sink the presidential fortunes of Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern. In the 1970s the definition of Conservative Democrats broaden to include not just Dixiecrats but also Northern and Midwest Catholics and Jews affected by the issues of busing, support for Israel, foreign policy and abortion. This manifested itself in the candidacy of Scoop Jackson and incubated the neoconservative movement.
All this began to change in the mid-1960s. Barry Goldwater became the first GOP presidential candidate to carry Deep South states like Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana since Reconstruction. Strom Thurmond changed parties and didn't suffer for it. Republicans were being elected in districts that reflecting growing suburban areas. And when George Wallace faded from the scene, a new force arose that acted as powerful magnet for Conservative Democrats to become Republicans: Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, himself a former Democrat, said that it was okay to switch parties and vote for him and other likeminded Republican candidates, because the national Democrats were taken over by Yankee radicals. "I didn't leave my party, my party left Me." was their battle cry. And pretty soon, not only were they leaving the party on the presidential level, which they had been doing for years, but also the Congressional, state and local levels as well. This trend, coinciding with the retirement of many older Conservative Democratic politicians and the switching of others to get with the winning team, saw the number of Conservative Democrats shrink accordingly. Other trends were working against them as well. The polarization of politics in the Clinton era made it hard for Democrats, even conservative ones, to stand for election in areas where Clinton was definitely unpopular. Party organization basically collapsed in many parts of the country. And conservative intellectuals, pundits and radio talk-show hosts basically demanded that all conservatives run in the same party i.e. the Republican Party, or be scorned.
The problem was they were trying to create a parliamentary party without a parliament. Parliamentary parties around the world may very well be homogenous on the issues or in their backgrounds because the have to be in order to carry out their mandate after winning an election. But in the U.S. parties developed as collection of different interests whether economic, racial, religious or regional. They've have always had to balance those interests through compromise and consensus. A party may have a few basic beliefs that unite all the factions, but ideology never entered into the discussion until the 1960s and 70s when young liberal and conservative activists and their allies in the media and academia demanded that all party members begin to tow ideological lines and punished those who didn't. Thus by the year 2000 you had Republican dominated red states and Democratic dominated blue states because the old Conservative Democrats (and likewise Liberal Republicans) were all but eliminated.
But Conservative Democrats came back largely because Republican mismanagement of the war, the economy and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They came back because DNC Chairman Howard Dean committed the party to a 50 state strategy instead of an 18-state strategy and has rebuilt the party in many red states and they came back because younger liberal bloggers shed their ideological hang-ups and welcomed and even helped wit the elections of Conservative Democrats like new Congressman Travis Childers of Mississippi and Don Cazayoux of Louisiana. Now Conservative Democrats are popping up all over the place, sometimes unexpected as Bob Conley, a former Republican committeeman from South Carolina and a Ron Paul supporter, switched parties to run as a Democrat and upset the party establishment's candidate in the primary and now has better shot of upsetting Sen. Lindsay Graham than did the conservative candidate in the GOP primary Buddy Witherspoon did.
The ground, however, is still tenuous. The Republicans will especially fight tooth and nail against Conservative Democrats because their reemergence threatens them with minority party status once again. Conservative Democrats still have to figure out how to fund their campaigns to remain conservative, otherwise they'll be depended on union and EMILY's list money that has a tendency of pulling politicians to the left and they have temper their ambitions for power because it's the more liberal Democratic caucus that elects committee chairmen and that also is pull away from conservatism as well. "Potomac Fever" has tripped up many a conservative Democrat in the past.
That's why it was a good sign to see other Conservative Democrats in the House provide money and political support to help elect Childers and Cazayoux. It also its good to see Conservative Democrats recognize themselves as new power bloc within the Congress that can temper the party's radical liberals, temper any kind of radicalism from a potential Obama Administration far more effectively than any shattered Republican Party can. And culturally, as party gravitates towards a more upscale, professional and cosmopolitan voting base, Conservative Democrats are going to be the only ones to contest the Republicans in downscale rural areas from Appalachia to the Deep South to the Near West and do so from a populist point of view when comes to economic issues.
A powerful Conservative Democratic Party could very emerge as more than just a mere faction of a major party in the years to come.
