Learning From Mistakes

Lately one party has done a better job of it than the other.

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U.S. President Joe Biden on February 28, 2023, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

In April 2010, with Tea Party fever peaking on the right, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina spoke admiringly to a group of activists about a rising star in the Republican Party. “I’d rather have 30 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters” in the Senate, he told them.

A lot has changed since 2010. But not everything.

Rudimentary math tells us that a Senate with only 30 small-government “true conservative” Republicans would produce legislation that’s vastly more liberal than a Senate with 60 RINO moderates in the mold of Specter or Susan Collins. A 70-seat Democratic majority would have the run of the place, the filibuster no longer a barrier to their most progressive ambitions. To Jim DeMint, the model of a “true conservative,” unchecked Democratic power was a price worth paying to purify the Republican Party.

He left the Senate two years later. Politico eulogized his political career aptly: “He wasn’t a legislator, has no signature laws to his name and has never been part of any major bipartisan negotiations.” We’ve grown accustomed to post-Trump populists like Marjorie Taylor Greene running for Congress despite evincing no interest in legislating, but DeMint got there first. By 2013, he was president of the Heritage Foundation; that year, his think tank panned the so-called “Gang of Eight” immigration reform proposal spearheaded by … Marco Rubio.

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  1. Janicewfahy

    Really great piece. Using DeMint is picture perfect. That said, The Dispatch needs to stop this sort of nonsense:

    “For instance, the party hasn’t moved an inch off of its fanatic “no limits” position on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year. “

    Just stop it. It’s deeply dishonest and I believe in my heart of hearts that the folks who make The Dispatch a reality know that.

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  2. Tallredrider

    Excellent insights. I think it is subconscious for the far right. They really do want to have power, but owning libs is so much more satisfying. So considerations of actually winning get swallowed up. And Democrats are more than a little happy to have drag queen story hour, so that Republicans get fired up to the point that they lose elections.

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  3. Midge

    "I grant again, as I did earlier, that a political party can moderate only so much for the sake of winning before undermining its raison d’etre. But if it turns out that moderating on the size of government and the projection of American power abroad is fine whereas moderating on the removal of Confederate symbols isn’t, it raises a question of what that raison d’etre might actually be."

    Sure does.

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  4. Mary Stine

    As a woman who nearly died from an ectopic pregnancy, I have an interest in making sure no woman who has suffered the death of her unborn child through no fault of her own (such as miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy)
    should also be forced to sacrifice her own life because "abortion is always wrong and illegal".
    This is not support for universal abortion access, but it definitely is something real that has happened in the past before Roe v. Wade and is returning again to haunt us.
    This is exactly why many women, not just Democrats do not support a universal ban on abortion.
    And this is an issue affecting women of color in greater numbers than other groups, especially in the 2nd trimester. It is an issue than often affects all women who've had polycystic ovary disease, endometriosis or a past history of IUD use or pelvic infections. There is not enough research at this point to prevent these issues and hence protect all pregnancies. But everyone who cares about protecting unborn life should be putting their dollars toward research to help these conditions.

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  5. Eklees

    The Stupids keep trying to dominate the Democratic party and the People of the Lie already dominate the Republican party. When Democratic party leaders push back against the Stupids, Democrats will (sometimes) win elections. But, if owning the libs or hazing the Right is your primary cause then the end always justifies the means, even if that end is losing the election.

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  6. Kelly Windsor

    I have never heard of anyone in the Democratic Party supporting “no limits” abortion. And there is no link or reference here to make that point.

    There are many places for spreading that kind of nonsense propaganda, I didn’t realize The Dispatch was one of them.

    “A reading of the bill shows that H.R. 8296 permits abortion up until delivery, but only if it is deemed necessary to protect the life of the patient. It does not explicitly require states to keep the procedure legal in all cases past the point of fetal viability.”

    “No limits” abortion is not a thing. No one thinks killing a baby is ok. But according to Pew research most people in both parties think abortion should be legal when a woman’s life or health is threatened.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/06/wide-partisan-gaps-in-abortion-attitudes-but-opinions-in-both-parties-are-complicated/

    https://www.wral.com/fact-check-would-democratic-bill-permit-abortion-up-until-delivery/20400047/

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    1. Tallredrider

      OK. Then go ahead an propose legislation that says you can't have an abortion in the last 3 weeks of pregnancy and see who opposes it. Every Democrat in the country will oppose it.

      Abortion is the Democrats' gun control. Republicans feel any infringement on firearms has to be rejected on grounds it is a slippery slope. The vast majority of gun toting Americans understand it is hardly a bad thing to have certain gun control restrictions like a waiting period, for example. The vast majority of Democrats don't think you should be able to abort a baby when it could literally be born healthy the next day, but they oppose any sane restrictions for fear it would be the start of a slippery slope. They are both nuts.

      I think if you haven't heard of Democrats supporting 'no limits' access to abortion, you haven't even Googled it.

      To carry it further, only a tiny fraction of homicides are carried out by someone with the weapons most often demonized by Democrats, and only a tiny fraction of abortions are performed after fetal viability. Again, both sides are nuts.

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      1. Kelly Windsor

        If you say a woman can’t have an abortion in the last three weeks of pregnancy unless her life or health is threatened NO democrat will oppose it.

        I can think of absolutely NO ONE who thinks it’s ok to kill a full term baby.

        I have googled it. Extensively. If you have any evidence, go ahead and share it. I can’t find any. Neither could Nick apparently.

        But if you keep saying it I’m sure some people will keep believing it. Without evidence. Which, as we know, doesn’t make it true.

        https://www.archbalt.org/poll-big-majorities-of-democrats-young-people-reject-late-term-abortion/?print=print

        https://vietfactcheck.org/2022/10/23/do-joe-biden-and-the-democrats-support-late-term-abortion-2/amp/

        “Abortions in the third trimester, which are extremely rare, typically occur because of a significant fetal abnormality, experts say. The bill that 49 Democratic senators voted to pass maintains the current constitutional standard that allows states to restrict abortions after fetal viability — the stage when a fetus is likely to survive outside the womb — but requires exceptions for risks to maternal life or health.”

        https://apnews.com/article/205822809847

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    2. Danielmedas1

      Yeah that comment was below the standard I expect at the Dispatch.

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  7. JKS Miller

    I realize that the inclusion of Nikki Haley and the Confederate Flag over the statehouse is tangental to the main thesis of this article. But it is noteworthy that so many politicians and average citizens who wrap themselves in their “awe” of the constitution don’t recognize all of the symbols of the confederacy as symbols of treason against the United States. See Article III Section 3 of the constitution of the United States. Treason is the only crime defined in the constitution.
    The main reason the participants in January 6th have been accused of “insurrection“ and not “treason” is that the United States was not in a declared war in which the January 6th participants were making war against the United States.

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  8. Dougrhon

    Plenty of Republican voters have learned that Trump=losing. Unfortunately they do not represent a clear majority.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Adtippet

    Polarization! Divisiveness! Love Nick's note here, "moderating on the size of government and the projection of American power abroad is fine." If Haley had a choice of removing the confederate flag, or expanding the size of a South Carolina welfare program, today's GOP would condemn the one and probably applaud the other. This is the reason for the surprising alteration on Ukraine. The party of "tear down that wall" is now the party of "well Putin is actually not a bad fellow." The GOP, which has won only one popular election in the past EIGHT election cycles does not know what it is, just that they oppose anything the Dems do.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Scarlette Tarte

    The Republicans went off the rails long ago. Long before Trump.

    If Republicans really want to get to the bottom of "how we got Trump", they need to do some soul searching examining of their past choices for the last 50 years.

    I am not talking about policy, either. Although I disagree with some of it, it's not because of tax cuts or "no child left behind" that the party of our right went loony toons.

    It's because all those years ago, the party made a conscious choice to appeal to grievance. To separate white voters from the Democratic party, especially southern white voters, the party decide to play to racial grievances. Which they did as a backlash to the civil rights victories and perceived racial gains made in the 60's and 70's.

    Once you make a step down that road, once you give in to the public's grievances, there is no going back. If a party gets their base stoked with rage, that becomes an addiction for those voters. And like any addiction, you have to take more and more of the drug, to try to get the same initial high.

    So Republicans then had to feed the beast.

    So here comes hate radio. Rush Limbaugh saying "Buckets of AIDS-tainted blood were intentionally thrown at the audience, and the audience ran for their lives" and had an AIDS update, reading the names of people who had died of AIDS each month with celebratory whistles and cheers, while playing "I"ll Never Love this way Again" by Dionne Warwick. Rush told hundreds of lies and hateful insults all during his run. Barack the magic negro, anyone? Pat Buchanan making speeches trying to elevate cultural differences into a holy war. Then years of grifting books with titles like Treason, Godless, Slander, Guilty, Adios America and DEMONIC(that's just one author, opining about how bad liberals are) every title more hyperbolic than the last, because...you see, you have to feed the beast.

    Then came the rise of the militias. War on Christmas. The black helicopter crowd. The incidences like the shameful Terry Schiavo "the left is trying to make it ok to kill people" nonsense. The Agenda 21 and "the UN is trying to take us down" crowd. The Tea Party. The huge increase in hate groups when Obama was president. The birther conspiracy. The ideas spouted off about what would transpire if gays were allowed to get married.

    It's all about feeding the beast. Is it any wonder that now it's " the Dems are pedophiles that order kids from Pizza parlors" and "they want to turn your kids trans!"?

    Hate and fear begats hateful leaders. If the Dems are an existential threat to your very existence, or to your kids, what is the next step? Of course a people conditioned on years of this hyperbolic rhetoric are going to vote for someone like Trump. Someone who will protect them from being wiped off the face of the earth, because, for 40 plus years they have been told this is what the left wants to do...give everything free to black people and bring in immigrants to destroy their voting power. And would steal an election to do it.

    Hell I would be scared too if I listened to all that crap.

    That's how we got Trump.

    If we really want to not allow people like Trump and Lake to get the nomination for president again...we need to dismantle all of that. We need to end these hyperbolic opinion shows, based on nothing more than half baked tales of fear and grievance. It would not hurt to go back to one half hour of news, daily and to reading newspapers, with their more in depth coverage of events. Get rid of, or severely restrict social media, especially as a source of news.

    It's too much noise. It's all heat and no light.

    Republicans need to get back to their ideas, their policy ideas and promoting those, discussing those things and how they will improve the lives of Americans and dropping the culture war grievance crap.

    It's not republicanism or conservativism that gave us Trump. Or any of the others like MTG or Gaetz or Jordan, or any of the crazy caucus.

    It's feeding the unrelenting grievance beast.

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    1. Andrew Holmes

      I have a different perspective. I believe you're correct respecting talk radio. What I also remember is the press railing against Limbaugh et. al., and mostly deaf when stupidity, abuse, and flat lies emanated from the lips of elected Democrats. Hillary Clinton was reflecting the long term, openly expressed attitudes of her party when she uttered "deplorables." She, and they, went far beyond normal partisanship in their regular expressions of contempt for people, not policies.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Scarlette Tarte

        Except you remember that statement as FOX reported it, not as she said it. And by the time Trump came along, many of his supporters WERE deplorable.

        Here is her whole statement...which is actually a statement of empathy for most Trump supporters.

        "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause]. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

        "But the other basket, the other basket, and I know because I see friends from all over America here. I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas, as well as you know New York and California. But that other basket of people who are people who feel that government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they are just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

        She later said she should not have said "half". But the fact is, she was right...some of his followers are and were horrible people...they are all the things she said they were. But the rest, the majority, are people who felt left behind.

        Now you can say this is "contemptuous", but I don't think so. I do think a lot of people voted for Trump because they don't see themselves doing as well as their parents did, or see the country in decline.

        And then press was not silent when she said that, either. It was reported that night because I remember watching that segment.

        There is no comparison to the flat out lie"they are throwing buckets of blood on people" and a statement that was a little tone deaf, but also empathetic.

        But, lesson learned.

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        1. Andrew Holmes

          I was aware of the full quote, but thanks for the reminder. I found her use of the term to summarize what very many elected Democrats had been saying for years. And her 'I shouldn't have been so inclusive' was not much of an improvement. We are in hearty agreement that there are despicable people who are defined as right-wing, although I've never grasped on what ideological basis moronic militiamen are defined as any sort of "wing." It reminds me of the pitch made a few years after the Soviet Union broke up, defining the hard core Communist bloc in the Duma as right-wing. Hilarious. The term was utilized to mean "bad" without any ideological content, designed to smear mud upon all so defined. If we are to engage in nut-picking, I believe that there is a host generally defined as left-wing who celebrate shoplifting, violent riots for the 'correct' cause, and a highly selective dismay at the moral deficiencies of others. And again, I thank you for a civil discussion from a different perspective. It's rare. I hope you feel the same.

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    2. Kelly Windsor

      Bravo.

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    3. John

      I agree entirely. Limbaugh did irreparable harm to America and our basic beliefs. I had a comment here yesterday about the Limbaugh Law. Limbaugh is also the original source of Fox viewers. I recall those who listened to “Rush” like he was a religious figure and immediately turning on Fox after. They reinforced each other while accusing CNN or traditional news as being biased or worse. And they all believed it because it was what they wanted to hear. One last point here. He source of election fraud has the same origin. After the 2012 election Fox made a big deal about election fraud, especially in Ohio won by Obama. I recall Fox Breaking News exposing a 85 year old grandma living outside Cincinnati for voting twice, an early vote and again on election day. Bill ORielly drove her to tears as she pleaded that she only wanted her vote to count and didn’t think it would be counted twice. The point here is that the concept of voter fraud did not begin with trump.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Scarlette Tarte

        I remember.

        I remember the left saying some of that "voting machines are rigged" stuff as well, but it didn't really take off like it has on the right.

        I don't remember the grand mother. I could never stand O'Reilly. He, Tucker, Hannity, would invite people on, then interrupt and shout them down. I mean, you don't do that to your guests! Disagree, fine, but let them make their point.

        It was always way too aggravating to watch.

        And Glenn Beck was a precursor to all the conspiracy stuff we have now.

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        1. John

          Yes. There has always been a noise over possible voter fraud. But it seemed to have increased significantly in the last 20 years or so. Even then, so what? Until trump came along

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