Why not join the party?
At one time, I would no more join the party than I would generate my own electricity or pick up my own garbage. I did my part. I always voted; although I confess sympathy with P.J. O’Rouke’s recommendation, “Don’t vote; It just encourages the _________s.” It was the job of our elected representatives to take it from there and keep the machinery of government oiled. Our constitutional checks and balances should be able to keep the blow dried politicians and megalomaniac bureaucrats under control and off our backs. The parties were pretty much the same, anyway. A lot of things were more important than party politics: family, church, home school, job, local volunteer organizations, hobbies, sports . . , almost anything.
Like most people in Wisconsin, several years ago I was not surprised to hear talk radio announce that department heads in Milwaukee had been caught giving each other multi-million dollar retirement bonuses in addition to outrageously “generous” retirement packages. Clearly Milwaukee aldermen, like those in Detroit whose municipal workers were giving each other raises while the city was self-destructing, were not playing on the taxpayer’s team. But that was Milwaukee.
It took Act 10 finally to get me off dead center and into the party. Like most vaguely aware Wisconsinites, I knew that Wisconsin was circling the drain economically, but it took the insanity following ACT 10 for me to realize that the Democrat party and the state government itself had become wholly owned subsidiaries of the public worker unions which believed that government was far too big to fail.
It took the hysterical public worker tantrums following ACT 10 to expose the extent to which the citizens of Wisconsin had somehow become servants of our public servants. We began to realize that our government employees really did feel entitled to better pay, better retirement benefits, and better healthcare than the serfs who paid the bills. Taxpayers began to understand why the state was going bankrupt while they were paying some of the highest taxes in the country. As Democrat public workers, especially teachers and professors, those whose job it is to teach the next generation about economics, history, and principles of government, rioted in Madison at the outrage of mere voters reducing the speed of the gravy train, Wisconsin citizens had had enough, They elected Republicans to put the service back into public service and get the whole state government enterprise onto a sustainable path.
But the election wasn’t enough. The Walker Recall reminded everyone that victory at the polls was a beginning not an end. The searchable Walker recall database exposed the extent to which, not just public union owned state representatives, but aldermen, supervisors, and school board members had become little more than rubber stamps for their various state agencies. The thuggery of the Madison protests convinced the public to stop kowtowing to their employees. The major media tried to dismiss the public outrage not as a grass roots reform movement but as “astroturf” made up of ignorant “teabaggers,” sheep who mindlessly followed populist rabble-rousers like Scott Walker. But the media vilification of the grass roots just added fuel to the fire. When the grassroots revival joined the Republican Party, good things began to happen, fast.
The rapidity of the state renaissance after the infamous Recall gives us hope for the country. Without the Republicans limiting the size and expense of state government, our state would be following Illinois into insolvency. The Republican turnaround, more than anything else, showed us that the party system was still relevant, that the public, despite more than 50 years of public education propaganda, could still be inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, limited government, and the rule of law. . . . Or was it just a refusal to be pushed around any longer? Whatever it was, it also showed us that Republican promises were more than campaign rhetoric.
A republic if you can keep it
This is what Ben Franklin was talking about when he said that you have “a republic, if you can keep it.” What hasn’t been easy on the state level becomes almost impossible on the federal level. Our success in the last election cycle marks the beginning of the fight to save our constitutional form of government, not the end. As we experience the hysterical recall Trump stage, it is more important than ever that citizens support the people that we have elected to do the tough job of dialing back the administrative state.
At one time we had the luxury of limiting our involvement to voting. After each election those within the party could afford to wish our newly elected representatives well, close the GOP offices, shut down the party apparatus, and get back to our lives. Today, with an army of professional agitators and full time socialist bureaucrats working tirelessly to run up out tab and limit our freedom, we can no longer afford that luxury.
Even more important than supporting the conservative representatives who are doing the heavy lifting in Madison and Washington, the party has to reteach the underlying principles of our republic. This is no small challenge since most of the academic establishment and those of Hollywood and the major media not only fail to teach these principles, they preach the limitless expansion of the state. For them to label themselves “the resistance,” is as perverse as Nazis labeling themselves “the resistance” to the Jews or for fascist thugs to claim the name “antifa.”
To say “yes” to freedom is to say “no” to the limitless power of the state. The Republican party must reclaim, in no uncertain terms, its role as the party of no. If the Republican Party, the real party of no, does not teach the great unifying principles of liberty, religious freedom, and equal justice under the law, who will? At a time such as this, it is the number one job of the GOP to promote the vision without which not only the party, but the people perish.
A dynamic Republican party cannot create, “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” but it can create the space for free people to make that happen. Everyone who joins the party helps the cause. When the history of this battle for the soul of the nation is written, let it not be said that we sat out the battle on the sidelines and then mourned its loss or celebrated a victory for which we had not fought.
By Art DeJong, Circa 2017