On Being Republican

Most every Republican gathered in Philadelphia this week for the GOP convention wouldn’t admit it, but they’ve all probably experienced a moment at one time or another when they asked themselves two questions: Why in the world am I a Republican? And why would anybody else want to be a member of the Republican party?

It can be a painful question — because the GOP is like the Boston Red Sox: so full of potential, but with so little to show for it. Or as former White House speechwriter Peter Robinson (he wrote President Reagan’s Berlin “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech) says in It’s My Party, his relationship with the GOP is like a love affair. “Sometimes I find myself thinking about the Republican party in the middle of the day,” he writes. “Other times, I find myself feeling so irritated with the GOP I want to break off our relationship. But somehow I never do, bearing the double burden of feeling irritated at feeling irritated.”

It’s My Party is an attempt by Robinson to see if his allegiance to the Republican party is worth the trouble. Of course the title gives away the answer: He winds up pretty much where he started, a committed conservative Republican. But that doesn’t matter. The book is neither a scientific experiment nor an effort to prove that Republican political theories work in practice. It’s really a travelogue, a trip around the country to interview Republicans, ask why they persist in the frustrating practice of being Republicans, and why others wouldn’t vote Republican if their lives depended on it. Robinson’s touch is light, his style conversational and highly readable. And in the end, the book makes about as good a case for the GOP as you’ll get these days.

Robinson concedes it’s “easy to find the Republican party absurd. The GOP calls to mind bland WASPs in New England, television evangelists down South, and feckless members of the House of Representatives in Washington.” It’s also easy to view the party as “pigheaded,” at least for its failure to appeal to single women, blacks, and Latinos. And, he adds, there’s “so much in the Republican party of which I disapproved.” But for all that, Robinson is hooked. “The GOP has led me on, like an old mistress, proving more fascinating the better I’ve gotten to know it, without ever losing its capacity to annoy, gall, infuriate, and exasperate me.”

Robinson finds converts to the GOP especially encouraging, including Michael Medved, the movie critic, author, and talk radio host. An orthodox Jew, Medved was attracted by the Republican party’s support for traditional morality. As he got to know evangelical Christians who are among the party’s most ardent followers, he lost his fear of anti-Semitism. “People of faith understand people of faith,” he told Robinson. After his house was robbed and the thief got a light sentence from a liberal judge, Medved “found himself looking at the GOP’s tough stance on crime with new eyes.” During the Middle East war in 1973, he realized Republicans were better friends — and defenders — of Israel than Democrats were. Voila! Medved was a Republican.

New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, raised a Democrat, joined the GOP for three reasons. The first was the expanding welfare state, which alarmed him. “The whole concept of entitlement was very, very, very destructive,” he told Robinson. The second was foreign policy: Democrats didn’t appreciate that American military strength was needed to preserve freedom and democracy. The third was his perception that the lack of political competition was killing cities like New York: Democrats won, and cities declined. Giuliani has been a Republican since voting for Gerald Ford for president in 1976.

Stanford political scientist Dave Brady moved from the far left to the Republican party. He was a Marxist, active in the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960s. But he became leery when he saw how Marxist societies worked. He read Milton Friedman and began to see how government regulation distorts the market. By the late 1970s, he was a conservative. “I became a conservative first. Turning into a Republican came second.”

Brady, by the way, has an explanation for why Republicans don’t feel as at home in the House of Representatives as Democrats do. Democrats like process. Republicans are bored by it. And it costs Republicans more to be in Congress. For many Democrats — former teachers, ex-social workers, onetime Unitarian pastors — being a House member is the best paying job they’ve ever had.

Robinson confronts the puzzling question of why Republicans outside Washington appear so successful and happy. For one thing, they don’t have the national press corps to deal with. In Washington, the media are unrelentingly hostile to Republicans and delight in portraying GOP leaders as both evil and inept. Robinson thinks the bias is based on the need of reporters to be adversarial, their hatred of Republican publishers, and the fact that Republicans are bad copy.

There’s a better reason: Most reporters are liberals who favor advocacy journalism, and thus push for whatever Republicans are against. Portraying Beltway Republicans in an unfavorable light comes naturally. Successful GOP governors and mayors outside Washington, the national press simply ignores. This is important because the country tends to see only one face of the Republican party: the beaten-down Beltway types.

What helps Robinson come to terms with the Republican party is something called “the Finkelstein Box,” named after GOP political consultant Arthur Finkelstein. It’s a lopsided box that covers all of America except the Northeast, Rust Belt, and West Coast. Inside, Republicans fare remarkably well. Why? Robinson went to Fresno, California, to find out. There, the people and the lifestyle were just like his hometown in upstate New York (which is outside the box but still a Republican stronghold).

Folks in his hometown, in Fresno, and almost everywhere else inside the box have a similar set of characteristics. They live in towns and medium-sized cities. They’re mostly white and Protestant. They attend church regularly, drive American cars, and listen to country music.

Why do all these go with voting Republican? “I don’t know,” says Finkelstein. “They just do.” He insists party affiliation is “one more element in the constellation of characteristics with which a person expresses his culture.”

From all this, Robinson concludes there truly is a GOP set of principles that Republicans “from Fresno to Jersey City” hold dear. They believe in individual responsibility. They figure “any government that absorbs a full one-fifth of the goods and services its citizens produce is too big and too intrusive.” They want America to be militarily unassailable. They believe the free market has a big role to play in solving social problems. Republicans divide on some social issues. “Yet the main body of the party — the GOP that lies inside the Finkelstein Box — is prolife, opposes special rights for gays, and supports the institution of heterosexual marriage,” Robinson says.

“The Grand Old Party proved bigger and Older — grander — than I had thought,” he concludes. But still as frustrating as ever.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.