When I accepted the invitation to go on Fox News on Aug. 24 to discuss my recent op-ed in the Washington Examiner, I understood that I was implicitly opening myself to lampooning from the Left. That much was readily obvious, and I was more than willing to bear that inevitability. What I did not quite foresee was the stronger rebuke that I drew from the political Right.
Much of the Left’s criticism of my article and my interview predictably focused on refuting my charge of a liberal orthodoxy in academia or my audacity to appear on Fox News. These were easy enough to dispense with for two reasons: (1) I had been expecting them, and, more importantly, (2) none of what I had said had been aimed at the Left or even at moderates. I had written my op-ed as an amicus to hard-establishment Republicans much like myself, advocating to view moderates within our own party more favorably. My focus had been on the GOP, and what non-Republicans felt was merely incidental to my core purpose of suggesting a method for reform of my own party.
I have drawn much condemnation from fellow Republicans for throwing the monkey wrench of accepting moderates into their plans to move the GOP further to the right. This may seem at least superficially valid. After all, more moderates in a party would pull the party further to the center, and hard-right members of the establishment, like myself, can’t quite have that. While I understand how enticing that argument looks, it operates on a flawed and politically suicidal premise.
Indeed, I have no qualms about moving the GOP rightward on most issues. While I have been center-left in the past, that may as well have been in another life. Today, I lie much further rightward than even most of my Republican counterparts on almost all issues of significance and, as such, it would make me euphoric to see my views define the political mainstream. But the flawed, yet tempting, paradigm of linking the acceptance of moderates into the GOP and our collective rightward drift as a one-or-the-other proposition bespeaks the unfortunate onset of political myopia.
Arguments against moving the GOP to the center cannot be extended to imply or assert that the party should shun moderate views. This is because continual dialogue is the key to political success, especially at the center. The political center is an interesting zone, occupied almost exclusively by case-by-case voters who are influenced heavily by engagement and dialogue. They bear lightly the burdens of party loyalty and are unencumbered by any sense of factional duty. Whether they vote on a single issue or on aggregates of policy positions, their inclinations are generally unpredictable and can only be gleaned through constant engagement.
This translates to, for example, a willingness to accept moderate candidates under the Republican banner, even if it doesn’t mean voting for them. Merely permitting a certain level of dialectical coexistence within the GOP promotes not only healthy discourse, but also a definitive possibility that such discourse will pull once-moderates further to the right, much as it did for me. The permeability of party lines at the center also means that candidates and members of the electorate can easily cross over. For example, moderates like Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, or Susan Collins, R-Maine, given their policy stances and priorities, could just as easily exchange caucus memberships with Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., or Doug Jones, D-Ala. But the mere fact that the former lot carries a postnominal “R” serves not only to constructively expose those moderates to the remainder of the far more conservative caucus, but also helps the party maintain an internal dialogue with dissenting views.
This keeps alive the very real possibility of guiding moderates rightward merely through engagement — a possibility that is diminished quite considerably when their institutional membership is altered or, worse, punitively revoked.
Moderates should not be feared. Accepting and engaging them is crucial to winning the long game and, from the way Democrats are treating their moderates, Republicans should take heart because they are already ahead.
Akhil Rajasekar is a student at Princeton University in the class of 2021.
