Republican By Default

It was frustration with the Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) that first prompted me to refer to myself as a ‘Republican by default’ several years ago. It stemmed from all the trips to the voting booth where I couldn’t find a candidate that I could vote for so I ended up voting against the other candidate. I still voted Republican, but only because the other guy was worse.

That same feeling returned when I showed up at the caucuses in February of this year. Fred Thompson had already withdrawn and Mitt Romney withdrew shortly before we the event. The base of the party wasn’t having a party. We were stuck with a candidate who had kicked us to the curb several times in the last six years as he journeyed leftward, probably the result of his previous defeat in the battle for the party’s presidential nomination.

Thanks to the WSRP my primary votes never really mattered, if they held a primary at all. It was the Nov. 2000 general election that I cast a vote for Bush. At that time he looked like a pretty good candidate. It was probably the first time I could actually vote for someone who would win. But even that would lead to disappointment.

His first term in office was not a disappointment. Then came the 2004 election. The ‘Bush brand’ was carrying the party and kept the Republicans in control of both houses and the White House. But the Bush brand would soon deteriorate, thanks in large part to Scott McCellan’s incompetence, to a point where it was no better than the generic brand.

Unfortunately, by that time, the only Republicans in constant view of the public were in the White House. All others were ignored by the media and most of the nation (unless they messed up). As a result the Republican ‘brand’ was replaced by the inferior and unpopular Bush brand.

The base of the party, which had gotten Bush elected twice was kicked to the curb at the advice of Karl Rove. What was once the dominating factor in the party’s politics had become nothing more than a voting block to be manipulated by a cunning consultant known to his only superior as ‘the turd blossom’. So his boss picked the flower and left the rest in the field for us to step in.

It’s amazing to me that the guy that the left has hated almost as much as Bush became the very person who undermined the base of the Republican party and left it floundering in it’s search for representation. By dominating national politics and media he left us divided and vulnerable to indecision (Hunter, Tancredo, Thompson) and to hucksters. In the end we ended up with someone we don’t like who was chosen more by the media than by the base of the party. They should be thanking this guy and carrying him on their shoulders as a hero to their party.

Not ready to give up I watched closely to see what the party was doing this year in the county where I live. As it turns out, they were doing almost nothing. They had very little to offer in most races and some races would have no one from the party on the ballot. They allowed the next county over (King County GOP) to basically select the candidate for the only county-wide office where there was more than one potential candidate.

Looking at the county GOP party I saw many layers of differing views. It was the result of decades of manipulation from various factions, some from within the county and some from the outside, that successively wrested control from the previous victor. For a while I wondered if it could ever be turned around. But I gave up on that idea. It would require a uniting force where there could be none. The views were too different and resentment too deep.

It used to be that I only had to look forward to defeat on the local, county and state level. Now I can look forward to it in both houses on the national level. The presidential nominee has a pretty good chance of winning, but I probably won’t vote for him. I’m not in a swing state. In fact this state is so far left that if my vote would ever matter to swing delegates in the electoral college to the Republican candidate, it would already be a landslide on the national level, which would mean that, again, my vote wouldn’t matter.

The party that was once the party of Lincoln, civil rights, welfare reform and the balanced budget couldn’t sell itself as being any better than the party of lawyers, liberal media commentators and labor union bosses.

We hear slogans quietly muttered to one another that don’t instill much confidence.

“Yeah, but the other guy is worse”.

[Cross -posted at 5views.com]