Michael Smerconish: For Me, the Party Is Over

[babylonsister]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-smerconish/for-me-the-party-is-over_b_470793.html

Michael Smerconish.Columnist, Radio Host
Posted: February 21, 2010
For Me, the Party Is Over

snip//

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.


snip//

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.

[mrcheerful]

1. Bayh said what? He lied, the democratic party has been taken over by centerists and

conservative Democrats who like their con friends ignore the liberal democrats and the rest of America. Independent my ass, the guy will vote R, he just won't have a say in which R he gets to vote for. I really enjoy these independents as they clearly show that for all their cheering on they did with the likes of Reagan who allowed the nuts a seat in the R party are now complaining the nuts are in command, yet run away instead of trying to get their party away from the nuts. When the going gets tough, the true con quits, should be their motto.

[BR_Parkway]

7. yeah, we pushed for a public option, something 70% of the country

wanted - obviously, it's us who are the 'looney fringe'

[MrModerate]

2. I get it that the Democratic party's ideas are not going to appeal to everyone . . .

Even to apparently thoughtful people like Mr. Smerconish. But I disagree strongly that partisanship is the same on both sides of the aisle. It's demonstrably worse on the right, which has decided that if they don't get to govern, no one does. That's rank UnAmericanism, if you ask me, and not at all equivalent to putting forth ideas, inviting the other side to weigh in on them, only to be greeted by a ceaseless chorus of "no."

And while I have no problem imagining a party with Goldwater and Javits -- both honorable men -- in it, the fact that Teddy Kennedy and John Stennis occupied the same party is a bit of an embarassment. Frankly, the Democrats' big tent is *too* big rather than too small, because it invites faux democrats like Bayh (and Nelson, and Landrieu, etc., etc.) into the fold, but doesn't demand any discipline of them when their votes are to be counted.

It's not that bipartisanship is dead, it's that only one party has tried to practice it, and both bipartisanship and that party are at risk of failing as a result. Now, Democrats need to abandon their fond dreams of bipartisanship and get on with governing. They've got the people on the side of the issues, when the issues are honestly presented, but they're losing the people because they appear unable to actually implement their policies.

The people will desert a weakling much sooner than they will a politician who disagrees with them -- which Dems may learn the hard way later this year.

[mrcheerful]

3. Ok you said it better then I could thanks

[BeyondGeography]

4. You're a Democrat, Mike, and, don't worry, we cave in to the Republicans all the time

:eyes:

[progressoid]

6. No shit. He can come to our side and still get all the Republican legislation he wants.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Another fool who thinks not voting at all is being 'independent'

another craven and fear based righty holding his ground, his shaky ground. This guy pushed Bush and Cheney on the nation, he drips bigotry, and in short, he is a conservative extremist. Skin head, loud and insistent voice, the whole package.
A guy who declares that he is not part of the voting at all. And thinks that is powerful. Whatever. Another skinheaded Republican shouting as he spins out of the galaxy.