Although I usually cover historical subjects and often keep my opinions as an undercard at best, this post is an opinion piece that includes historical examples, and it’s about a demand for litmus tests and purity.
For the Republicans, there is a constant risk of a cry of “RINO” (Republican in Name Only) from some troll or hothead much like zombies of the silver screen cry for “brains”, done as a term of abuse that can happen when a single disagreement arises, be it on a policy or even whether Trump’s latest statement is worth a defense. For the Democrats, it comes in the form of the left-wingers not believing many Democrats are left-wing enough or having standards that places them to the left of almost everyone if not everyone in Congress, despite there being a very small overall difference between how Bernie Sanders and the Democrats as a whole vote on major issues: he has voted with the Biden Administration 91% of the time (FiveThirtyEight). But maybe that 9% matters a great deal? Well, how about a more ideological look with the votes that were counted by the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action. Looking at lifetime average scores adjusted to not count unopinionated absences, Sanders scores a 98% while Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) scores a 95%. I remember attending an event that was about getting liberal and conservative folks to talk matters out, and I remember one young liberal woman talking about how there needed to be a “litmus test” for abortion in the Democratic Party despite nearly all Democrats in Congress by that time falling on the “choice” side in votes on the issue. I internally chuckled that she didn’t know how divided Democrats really used to be on abortion. You too can know by checking out the votes on the Hyde Amendment in 1976, which are located in References.
The demand for purity can go so far as 1 dissent from conservative or liberal position out of 20 votes immediately makes you a Republican or Democrat in Name Only, which should sound ridiculous. Yet, this is how some people think about things! It’s akin to if you regard yourself as a vegetarian yet you ate a single strip of bacon in a year’s period and thus you can no longer call yourself one. Like accident counters in workplaces, a single infraction is back to day zero for you! This emphasis on purity is difficult and for most people it frankly proves unsustainable: 84% of people who adopted a vegetarian diet ate meat after a year (Schultz). Politically, I can promise you, no president in history has been what you would call 100% liberal or conservative. Although FDR is unmistakably identified with liberalism and rightly so given his New Deal policies and internationalist foreign policy, he also vetoed veterans bonus legislation in 1935 and 1936 and ultimately agreed to sign the Hatch Act into law despite reservations in 1939. Ronald Reagan is unmistakably identified with conservatism and again, rightly so given his free market and socially conservative philosophy and actions, yet supported immigration reform that included amnesty, supported foreign aid measures in 1981 and 1982, and opposed a Helms (R-N.C.) amendment to block technology imports to the USSR.
Although Donald Trump is viewed by many conservatives as a great defender of their values and positions, he has on multiple occasions embraced compromise spending packages, opposed by many conservatives, despite his view now that there should be no compromise on spending with Biden (Kapur). As Trump himself tweeted on a 2019 budget deal on August 1, 2019, “Budget Deal is phenomenal for our Great Military, our Vets, and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! Two year deal gets us past the Election. Go for it Republicans, there is always plenty of time to CUT!” (Grisales) I also promise you that no legislator has truly been 100% conservative or liberal in their record, although there are those out there who come really close. What we must ultimately decide is what constitutes “good enough” for philosophy.
Continuing on the vegetarian metaphor, is the occasional strip of bacon ok? Is being a pescetarian ok? Or must the quest for human perfection continue unabated? Is heaven a sparse place and hell a crowded place? For some, particularly among Americans, the answer to the last question is a definite YES. Such a perspective is completely ignorant of a past that is not in truth THAT long ago in which you had real conservatives and real liberals in both parties. Today who we call liberals in the Republican and conservatives in the Democratic parties are in truth moderates, and their numbers, at least nationally, are small, with their influence being that party majorities in Congress appear to depend on them.
References
ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.
Retrieved from
Does Your Member of Congress Vote With Or Against Biden? (2023, January 3). FiveThirtyEight.
Retrieved from
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/bernard-sanders/
Grisales, C. (2019, August 1). Senate Passes 2-Year Budget Deal and Sends It To Trump. NPR.
Retrieved from
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747219927/senate-passes-2-year-budget-deal-and-sends-it-to-trump
HR 14232 – Prohibiting Taxpayer-Funded Abortions [House Vote]. American Conservative Union.
Retrieved from
http://ratings.conservative.org/bills/US-1976-house-HR14232-HydeAmd
HR 14232 – Prohibiting Taxpayer-Funded Abortions [Senate Vote]. American Conservative Union.
Retrieved from
http://ratings.conservative.org/bills/US-1976-senate-HR14232-MagnusonMotion
Kapur, S. (2023, September 25). Trump breaks with McCarthy, pushing Republicans to shut down the government. NBC News.
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Schultz, C. (2014, December 9). Most Vegetarians Lapse After Only a Year. Smithsonian Magazine.
Retrieved from
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/most-vegetarians-lapse-after-only-year-180953565/
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 