Confessions of a recovering RINO
I have alluded to this many times over the years, but I need to come right out and confess, because it’s important as setup. I used to be a RINO – a Republican In Name Only – because I was a young man in a hurry, and the GOP was the only game in town.
In Illinois, my State Rep was the IL House GOP Leader (sometimes, Speaker). My GOP State Senator was President of the Senate. My Congressman was Henry Hyde – yes, THAT Henry Hyde. Most of my local allies were Republican (we had other parties within our city elections that did not align with the Dems or GOP) and the local Democrats were a Gang of Eight septuagenarians who sat around polishing their “McGovernment” buttons and wringing their hands.
It really was a thing.
I was a young man. In a hurry. So once I had won local office and was hungry for more, I made bad choices. Regardless of other regrets, one positive outcome from my ambitious weakness was that almost everything I know about winning elections comes from being a very attentive cog in the DuPage County Republican Machine.
One fine summer day in 2004, it was my duty to babysit an aging, ailing Henry Hyde at our annual County GOP golf fundraiser. He was a nice guy, a man of honor, sometimes misplaced, sometimes misused, but oh! did he get a twinkle in his eyes around the young ladies. They, and many older ones, fawned over Henry in his wheelchair like a favored grandfather at a summer picnic. He was harmless, now: twinkle was all he could do anymore.
Later in the afternoon, after Henry had gone home, the honored guest/keynote speaker arrived – Alan Keyes (R – Carpetbag) who moved from Maryland to Calumet City to run in the US Senate Race against a skinny black kid with big ears and a funny name. Keyes is a Conservative nutjob, a true-believer in everything that is wrong about the Right. He worked the outdoor crowd in a grey suit (no tie) and gym shoes, almost disappearing from view at times, not because he was mobbed, but because he is tiny.
I parked myself under the overhang of a refreshment stand on a small hill. Not only was I closer to the beer there, I also had a very good panoramic view of a few hundred folding chairs in front of the small trailer/stage set up for his speech. Slowly the seats filled up with an entire generation of white-flight suburbanites, ready to be wowed by the Conservative firebrand with the right skin color to maybe take the Senate fight to Brock O’Whozits. Lighting a cigar, I leaned against the wall to watch the speech.
Like so many other God-smacked true-believers, Keyes absolutely loses his shit over a woman’s right to control her own body. After doing a stanza on his biography and a stanza on the race, Keyes started in on abortion, with inconsiderate sideswipes at the whole concept of women’s issues. He was hardly three sentences into that, however, when it happened: a woman about three quarters of the way back got up and left.
Then another. And another. And another one. Then several at a time. All women. All Republicans. All getting up and leaving in silent protest. By the time the speech was over, half the women in the audience had drifted away. I already knew Barack Obama would win the Senate seat. That fine summer day, I learned Obama would win big. He did, by the biggest margin in Illinois history.
Now four days before Election Day, twelve years later, as President Obama is finishing his second term, I also know that Hillary Clinton will win big to succeed him in the White House. When did I learn that?
One fine summer day. In 2004.
Yes, Primo. Life has its lessons. no? Unfortunately they don’t come with a gold-edged piece of paper suitable for framing. Great story.
1Thank you for putting my heart at ease. Hopefully enough women will vote to make the difference. I really enjoy your posts, Primo. This old white woman has voted and I’M WITH HER!
2I am unenrolled (since there is now an independent party), hoping for that now mythical beast, a non-Democratic party candidate that is socially progressive and fiscally conservative. All I see are anti-tax nutjobs that tie up expenditures on crucial infrastructure for so long that any concessions they win are swallowed by the costs of delaying the project’s completion.
There once was a concept of collegial opposition, now there are seeming blood feuds. I didn’t vote for Bill Weld, but I recall him as an effective Governor. I can only hope that the Republican party of today splinters into a Teahadist faction, and the traditionalists that are left over. If that happens, maybe the job of governance can be pulled out of the dust. In my warped(?) view of governance, fiscal matters would be trimmed and balanced to get the most bang for the buck, and logic and reason holds sway.
Yeah, I know. I’m dreaming. BUT the Cubs did win the World Series…
3Alan Keys is a perfect example of an egotesticle Repub WingNut.
I have a suggestion for what to do with his body. He should be stuffed and preserved somewhere in a museum as a bad example.
4That Alan Keyes run was the experiment that allowed Kung Fu Monkey to identify “the crazification factor”, the 27% of voters who would vote for Beelzebub himself if he had an R after his name on the ballot.
5Keyes was 1. batshit 2. an outsider with no name recognition 3. black, and still got 27 % of the vote.
You may remember that W’s favorability rating eventually dwindled to … 27%
Nothing like a parade of women to catch a man’s attention …
6Great story. Thanks.
7Call me a slow learner,if you must, but it took a while for me to figure out that my road was smoother the happier was my little bride. Most of the knots on my head from those years have resolved, but the training remains clear.
I too have a confidence Secy Clinton will win big. Down-ballot I have less confidence, but there are certainly some winnable races if the Dems in those states will get off their dead a$$es and GOTV!
8A reminder of that nut job we threw out of Maryland. And I sure hope you’re right about the women’s vote. Last week I thought I could relax a bit about this bloody election, but now I’m snarled up in knots again.
Micr, you remind me why some married women are advised to keep a stock of 2x4s handy. Fortunately I’ve never needed to use mine; a simple “I’m armed” usually suffices.
9Dear Primo, I guess we have been neighbors off & on through the years, as I lived in the suburb next door to Henry Hyde’s home town & then for years in DuPage County. Never had to sink to voting Repub, though, except in the primaries, where Repubs had the only choices. My Repub friends vote in the Dem primaries here in El Paso — again, because there are choices. Son & d-in-law worked with Obama when he ran for the state senate. Their daughter’s middle name is Hillary & my grandson, Tyler, looks forward to having a woman president. Life is good!
10You had a chance to rid the world of slimy Hyde and didn’t?
11I expected better of you, Primo.
“Happy wife, Happy life” is a well-known axiom, for sure. But I know several Ohio women who are voting Hillary quietly while their husbands are for Trump. The plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” but I’ve never known this split-couple voting to be so prevalent, before.
The ones I talk to all have friends in the same boat. It’s so damned strange! Used to be, when I was working field, that we assumed one person in a household was a good indicator of the whole household. It’s a very rough rule of thumb subject to being wrong a significant portion of the time. But in small races, with small budgets, little data and few volunteers, it’s a fairly safe assumption to do GOTV with.
Within my circle of acquaintances, there’s a lot of husbands who cannot reliably report what their wife might do on Tuesday, yet another reason why turn-out is difficult to model. And the Trump team, having no data to speak of, has to run a generic GOTV which in such households are likely to turn out a vote to cancel the vote they are trying to reach.
From a field standpoint, Trump is running a national race for President of the United States the same way someone runs for City Council in a town of 20,000 people.
12I hope you’re right, Primo. In fact, I’m guessing you are right. And then what?
The R’s will hold the House so an impeachment is a certainty. And, if D’s don’t hold the Senate, so is a conviction.
Then, they’ll start in on Kaine. After all, what have they got to lose? The Speaker will be a Republican and, if they can oust him, they’ll get their Republican president after all.
While it sidesteps complete calamity, a Clinton win does not ensure a working government or even a return to moderate sanity. The primary result, imo, will be pundits crowing that Women’s Rights Are Safe and Sexism Is A Thing Of The Past.
And that will work out just as well as the post-racial America that was heralded when Obama won.
IOW, we’re not out of the woods, folks. Still, when we think about the alternative, we CAN count our blessings.
13A simple majority of congressional wingnuts (simple being the operative word) must vote for impeachment plus two thirds of the senate. Wingnuts don’t have a single crime they can attribute to HRC unless they hurry up and vote to make making congress look stupid a crime. Dems would put a kibosh on this by stating up front that the senate will not vote to impeach-ever- unless it is for a wingnut.
14@Primo-The UT Poll had an interesting bit. I understand this poll is generally respected as being non-partisan.
See the paragraph titled “There’s definitely a gender difference in the Texas electorate, but it’s not what you might expect.” (about the 4th paragraph down).
https://www.tribtalk.org/2016/11/02/what-the-uttt-poll-tells-us-about-texans-support-for-donald-trump/
Very hard for me to digest. Is it Stockholm Syndrome on a massive scale?
15“Estimating” snacilbupeR enthusiasm for Donnie is akin to attempting to determine how urgently a toddler needs to pee by counting the number of times they hop on one foot. The reasonable person doesn’t count or wait; they take the toddler to the nearest restroom. We know where to take the toddlers. Determining where we should take the snacilbupeR post election is a quandary. Is it too late to make their Jade Helm fantasies come true?
16Take heart, mel! That poll was taken Oct 14-Oct 23, so some of the responses are a full 3 weeks old. Some good news is that Stein hurts no one while Johnson hurts Trump, apparently. Also, the weakness of an “I don’t want…” voter leads to a lot of them staying home, especially considering this article – some more recent encouraging news – which when I read it this AM actually served as the inspiration for my column today:
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/11/04/texas-women-republicans-boil-over-coarsening-rheto/
Thus, the tie among women in the poll may resolve itself to enough of a lead for Hillary to overcome the 7 points among men.
Don’t despair… VOTE! And bring someone with you. Texas can do this!
17And then we hear about Catholic priests in California scaring their parishioners by telling them they will go to hell if they vote Democratic. And of course, many of them are Latino. Those bigots should be jailed.
18I have long thought Hillary will win with ‘north’ of 315 electoral votes.
19I see no reason to change mind.
I live in Illinois and this is Clinton Country.
Maryelle: Yes!! And did you hear what the diocese said? They “can’t do anything”. Excuse me? Can’t do anything about child-molesting priests? Can’t do anything about rogue churches getting into politics? And then they are mystified why people (like me) are leaving the Catholic faith? Pope Francis? You gotta lot of work to do, padre.
20I tweeted to ask the opinion of @Pontifex – no reply…yet?
21I’m jealous that my son and daughter got to vote for Hillary before I did!
22I’ve been waiting longer to vote for a women then they have.
Go Hilary!!!!!!!!
My daughter brought my grandson to vote on this historic occassion.
He was not impressed, he slept! Of course he is only 10 months old, but I will remind him when he is older!
Thanks, Primo! I needed this. It feels like a very long time until Tuesday night.
23Two Crows –
Post election will be bad, but not that bad. As epo stated, impeachment requires a 2/3 vote by the Senate. Which would require not a smoking gun, but a bleeding corpse. And if the unthinkable happened and HRC was impeached, Kaine would take over and appoint his own Veep. Excepting a dire event, where Pres. and Veep were both dispatched at once, the Speaker won’t get his grubby little paws on the presidency.
The Senate will hopefully turn blue. And even if not, I think there may be a chance that a Repub or 2 may switch parties, like Ben Horse’sAss Campbell, or Arlen Specter. There are still some senators who actually hate gridlock, and would like a chance to govern. Some who hate what their party has become. And also some like Campbell, (ptui!) who just want to be on the winning side.
24So to break a 50-50 gridlock, without always having Kaine have to break the tie, we might get a convert.
As a former Republican myself, I can relate – it’s why I started a (now dormant) Republicans Anonymous blog, and why my screen name is RepubAnon. It’s been 30 years since I’ve voted for a Republican…
25Me, I call myself a Reagan Democrat; in that Reagan’s election permanently converted me to voting Dem. Previously I was a Republican. But I was young and didn’t know better!
26Have been a Democrat for so long I almost forgot that when I was in college one year I identified as a Repub in order to even try out for the debate team. I kept getting really petty questions about why Ike didn’t do this or that or why he wasn’t more this or that. Had to surprise people that there was a thing called Congress Assembled that enactrf laws and such like and it was better to keep an eye on that than the President! They thought I was nuts and no I did not make the debate team but hey I went back to being a Democrat to it all worked out well.
27As if Hillary didn’t have enough to worry about (FBI, NCarolina disenfranchising voters, Fox News false reports of indictments)now the Russians are set to hack the election on Nov. 8th. Good God, our first female president has had to jump over one obstacle after another. No wonder the Clintons complain about that vast right wing conspiracy. I’ve never seen anything like this, one huge dirty trick after another.
28@ e platypus onion:
When has not having a crime to point to ever stopped the wingnuts? Especially as regards the Clinton’s? Aamof, we saw that play out just this week.
Boy oh boy, are the R’s scared of the Clinton’s or what? Still, that doesn’t stop them from accusing them of everything from fraud to murder. Or, to be more accurate, it motivates them to do so.
29Primo — l*o*v*e*d the story — thanks for sharing!
30@
31Of course, in the best of all worlds, Faux News would go bankrupt or something…
Ever since Newt and that “Pledge for America”, the idea of civility and sanity seems to be missing from the GOP. I only wish we knew at the time how hipocrytical those people were about Bill’s dalliances, or how hard they would push *for* an anti-family values candidate…
32two crows, while the House Speaker and third-in-line-to-the-President should logically be a Repub, that is assuming that they can get enough votes together to elect somehow. There is already talk that Ryan won’t have enough votes. Wouldn’t it be amusing if the new Speaker needed some Dem votes to reach a majority.
33Primo, is there a conceivable way to reframe a conversation with a wingnut to at least reach common ground on issues regarding equal rights under the law & stuff? I used the Socratic method on Grandpa when I was a flaming radical in college, but in these times he left his ballot blank on top & voted straight GOP down the line, kind of like rooting for the Yankees or Cowboys, til death do us part…
34per Old Fart:
“I am unenrolled (since there is now an independent party), hoping for that now mythical beast, a non-Democratic party candidate that is socially progressive and fiscally conservative.”
ok, i’ll that this is a legitimate concern on your part. what programs, etc. would you have slashed and/or cut entirely, in your wish for fiscal conservatism? I’m a cpa, and I actually understand the budgeting process and governmental accounting (not to be confused with revenues/expenses), and I have a few ideas, but I’ve run into a huge brick wall: huge parts of the budget are pretty nearly fixed in stone: defense spending and non-SS entitlements, which consume probably 95% of budgeted expenditures.
were it up to me, two places that have their budget red flag flying are Defense, and the DEA. defense is rife with waste, it’s simply a matter of going into it, line by line, with a red pen, and trimming bloat. as for the DEA, I’d do away with the agency in its entirety, as it is a classic example of redundancy of effort. the FBI can and has done the same job, and has an employee base at a much higher level of intelligence than the DEA’s.
so Old Fart, what would you cut/eliminate, given the opportunity to do so?
35Cpinva,#33, excellent post!
36Well, I *meant* more in terms of *new* expenditures, but if asked specifics for *cuts*: F35, gone; drug testing for welfare/food stamps, gone; subsidies for ethanol, gone; etc. I am someone that wants *somebody* to ensure that waste is avoided while I pay for the social programs and other expenditures we need to keep our way of life**.
In this case I meant more that in the case of (my local) expenditures like a new high school, or the Big Dig, that fiscal conservatives would help to define what should be good enough without breaking the bank. I know, I know, the non-hyperpartisan center right is no where to be seen, but once upon a time in MA they *helped* make a better sausage. The problem (on the right) lies more in the social progressive part now-a-days, scratch an anti-tax surface and I suspect the undercoat is likely more concerned about melanocytes and religion.
** As a CPA, I think you perform just the kind of function I wish for. I hope for accountability, fresh eyes on a problem, and a government that gets stuff done on a reasonable budget. I’m not afraid of taxes as long as I know that the expenditures are thoughtful and deliver bang for the buck. As for the social stuff, respect shouldn’t cost a penny 😉
37as a cpa, I like to think I’m one of the good guys, doing my bit to try and keep people from being taken for a monetary ride by the big guys. although, Enron/Arthur Anderson sure put a taint on the profession. if I could have bottled the level of fury at them in my office, and converted it to a useful form of energy, I could probably have powered a medium sized city for a year on it.
with respect to your analysis of the right, I actually think it’s twofold: they are genuinely anti-tax, because they feel entitled to all the benefits our taxes provide, but they shouldn’t have to actually help pay for them, because they are special snowflakes. see: Bundy, Cliven, et al
the right’s social position is that only they, by virtue of their strong family values, know what’s best for everyone else. of course, they neglect to mention that the family whose values they are trying to emulate would be the soprano’s.
38LynnN said, “an egotesticle Repub WingNut.” Very clever and very funny.
Mel, it’s much more than a Stockholm Syndrome for women. The historical, institutional memory of trauma at the hands of males extends for as long as genders have existed with the exception of a very few small cultures.
The powerless quickly learn that aligning oneself with the powerful, or surrendering to a permanently subordinate position is the road to survival. There is always a segment of the powerless who simply cannot adopt either position and will rebel. Women are no different, except for the duration of their powerless position and immediate proximity to the powerful. Those 2 aspects have served to deepen the Stockholm effect.
The rebels who challenge the powerful are unbelievably courageous.
39