I am a conservative. That matches my ideological worldview. I’m also a Republican, but if that party were no longer the one advocating for conservative values and an approach to good governance, I would find another party. What I know for sure is that the Democrat party is anything but conservative. Moreover, it has undergone radical changes in the last two decades.
When I was first elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2001, I joined a predominantly conservative body. That was certainly the case with the Republican caucus where I was a member. Yet we had among us moderate GOP members and a very few who leaned to the left on key issues, particularly those related to social and fiscal matters. They seemed to me to be misplaced people, better served by becoming Democrats. But for their own reasons, they felt it their duty to dwell among us, hoping to convert us, I suppose. They did not. And eventually they would retire or be replaced by others. Sometimes that would be a Democrat more in step with the ideological preferences of the voters in what would be called “swing” districts.
What the GOP caucus did not do was force less conservative members to leave. They left of their own volition. Their issue was a disagreement over issues. There is no disgrace in this.
The Democrats on the other side of the aisle, however, were far less tolerant of their conservative-leaning members. I once watched in shock as they castigated one of their own on the House floor with dripping condescension for holding fast to a view not of their liking. In the main, they tolerated the small number of their conservative incumbent members who hailed from districts that would otherwise elect a Republican.
There were, however, similarities in this respect. As moderate members of both parties either retired or were replaced by competitors from the opposing side, both caucuses drifted further toward the ideological limits of the right or the left. Their response to demographic shifts in voting populations was to dig in, moving both parties further apart. In that environment, compromise became a dinosaur among the living. Whatever the issue, both sides tended to repair to their ideological redoubts to fight it out. Only in rare cases, often involving budgetary matters, was there any sense of compromise. If legislation were social in nature, it could not survive unless a party-line vote passed it. Governance was out. “My way or the highway” was in.
This is sadly understandable, amid the enduring “culture wars” that have dominated American politics since 1992, when conservative writer and activist Pat Buchanan coined that term. It remains so today, with a slight difference.
Republicans, it seems to me, have dealt better with their members from swing districts. This is evident in Congress today, where both the House and Senate Republican leadership are accommodating their more moderate members, mindful that they hold slim majorities. Those majorities hang by a thread, and without their moderate members, they would be out of power and subject to the whims of Democrats in Congress.
For conservatives, that tolerance can be maddening. “They are RINOs” is the charge against those believed to be “Republicans in Name Only.” Occasionally, they are also bitterly castigated by some. Yet were these moderates not part of the current caucus, the Republicans would be in the minority in the current ideological war raging in America today. They are tolerated to retain power.
Across the aisle in Congress, however, the ideological bent is more radical than I thought possible when I entered politics. The Democrats have swung so far left that they have alienated even moderate people who have reflexively voted for their party out of loyalty. Since the rise of Donald Trump, in the last elections alone, Democrats lost nearly 2.1 million registered voters across 30 states while the Republican Party gained 2.4 million.
In the fight for moderate voters, Donald Trump has tilted the election game board in favor of Republicans. And his response so far has been one aimed at keeping them in the Republican column. He and Congress are doing that by delivering on issues Trump exhorted on the campaign trail. And that “promise-made promise-kept” strategy is working. This has left the Democratic Party in the wilderness.
Today, they continue to struggle to address the issues that concern most voters, including conservatives and moderates alike. The Democrat party is too stuck in a morass of woke terms and political correctness to see how badly outflanked they have become in a war for the hearts and minds of American voters.
Some Democrat-friendly groups, like the Third Way, think it’s about getting rid of liberal buzzwords like “birthing person,” “cisgender,” “the unhoused,” and “Latinx.” Nope. It’s about issues.
That’s why Democrats remain lost.
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