Political parties are sometimes not parties at all. They may have a “party” when they are triumphant in an election, but frequently their “parties ” are not celebrations, particularly when they are at each other’s throats. In such cases, they are at best more like a messy family reunion and at worst a bitter divorce proceeding. I witnessed the range of disaffection during my 16 years of legislative service. It wasn’t always pretty.
In the numerous elections I stood in, the most bitter contests were the intraparty ones. There are always differences among candidates of the same stripe. But you would expect that the variance would be minor. In my own tribe—the Republican Party—it wasn’t always so. Sometimes, the differences were over issues on the margin. Others were more sharply delineated, particularly on social issues or taxation. Often they were a matter of personality. But frequently, the campaign could get quite heated.
In the GOP, we have had our trying moments. During the Obama years, when the Tea Party (Taxed Enough Already) spawned, it soon was drawn into policy fights that had more to do with issues outside of its original focus, which was specifically excessive taxation. Likewise, Libertarians infatuated with Congressman Ron Paul were so unhappy that he was not nominated by the GOP for president in 2012 that they became a drag on the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney. And of course, even the MAGA coalition so adroitly assembled by Donald Trump is now pulling at its own seams concerning tariffs, gas prices, and the war in Iran. Parties are not parties.
Today you need look no further than the Democrat Party to see that. For years, the Democrats were satisfied to tell us that we were not spending enough on anything. The exception was defense. Despite their gratuitous words in support of “our troops,” they actually do not like the military because it tends to be conservative, which, of course, Democrats are not. Otherwise, they’ve consistently ascribed to the view that the government is the piggybank by which they win votes by handing out other people’s money. They chafe at the idea that a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have. But that, of course, is a true threat to us all. Big government will run our lives if we place in its hands the bridle to control us. No thanks.
However, in recent years—a function of the civics illiteracy that teacher unions have presided over—a generation of misguided and uneducated youth has attained voting age. They have been sold a bill of goods labeled “socialism” that is very much about handing out other people’s money, wealth, homes, and rights. Their motto is gimme-gimme. But there is a darker side.
The socialists advancing under the Democrat Party banner are advocating for issues that are quite apart from the Democrats we knew in the 1990s. Those Democrats were happy to tax and spend. But today’s Democrat socialists are unhappy unless they are confiscating and destroying.
Consider the issues they embrace. Seizing private property through rent control. Anti-Semitism. Support for terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, thus aligning with those who are slaughtering innocent men, women, and children. Biological males playing in biological female sports. Boys “identifying” as girls and using the latter’s locker rooms. Wide open borders. Tourists coming to the US for the sole purpose of having babies that would then have dual US-foreign citizenship. Social programs that are fraught with fraud. Offering Medicare benefits to people who have not paid a solitary penny into the program. Defunding the police. Doxing law enforcement officers who are executing the law as written. Granting bail for criminals on the same day that they commit crimes.
I grew up with traditional Democrats who would have rejected this. To be sure, they wanted government to do more for the needy, but they had reasonable criteria. Not so now with Democrats.
Indeed, today’s Democrats, focused as they are on rebuffing Trump for any reason at all, have condoned their socialist adherents in unimaginable ways. When the communist Zohran Mamdani was elected as mayor of New York City last year, Democrat pols nervously told us, “That’s a New York phenomenon, not indicative of Democrats across the fruited plains.” Oh really? Now those socialists have also succeeded in several states across the country.
And the mainstream Democrat response? “We’re a Big Tent Party.” Well, that tent is soaked with a radical accelerant. And when the match is struck, it will ignite a bonfire. It’s time for Democrats to consider what until 5 minutes ago was unthinkable. That will require them to temper Trump-hatred and vote Republican. It may be ashes in their mouth, but better than ashes at their feet.
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