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Grenades in Our Tent
THE EXPRESSION “DON’T AIR YOUR dirty laundry in public” doesn’t make sense to many Millennials because most of them never hung their laundry on a clothesline in their backyard. When and where I grew up, a clothesline in the yard was as much a given as a roof on the house or gravy on the potatoes. But frankly, the part about airing “dirty” laundry never made sense because no one would place dirty laundry on the line—the whole point was to place the freshly washed and clean laundry on the clothesline so it would dry and be sanitized by the sun. There were few secrets in a neighborhood where people put their underwear on a clothesline for the world to see, and whose houses had open windows with screens that kept out flies and mosquitoes, but also let the conversations be heard. Since we only could get three channels on the old black-and-white TV on a good day off the rooftop antenna, when TV was boring, one could just sit near a window and catch up on what the neighbors were saying. And if they were on the phone, we could still keep up because in the days before the NSA listened in and taped our every call, most of us had “party lines” for phone service. That meant that several families in the neighborhood shared a line. Each family had a distinct ring so we knew whether to officially pick up or just pick up and listen in without saying anything. Party lines were much cheaper than private lines, so naturally, we had one.
In the summer, when it way too hot to sit indoors on an August night in Arkansas until well after sundown, most folks would take to the front porch. The porch usually had some chairs, a ceiling fan of some kind, and ideally a porch swing hung from the rafters or ceiling of the porch. If you were lucky, the porch was screened, but if not, there would be several flyswatters and everyone took turns swatting at flies and mosquitoes or wasps or yellow jackets. If insect repellant products like OFF! had been invented, we certainly couldn’t afford to buy them, and a flyswatter would last for several summers and usually was given for free at the hardware store when you bought some stuff. I don’t think we ever had a flyswatter at my house that didn’t remind us that we could buy lumber or tools at Duffy Hardware. And all of our yardsticks (three-foot type) and twelve-inch rulers let us know that Lagrone Williams Hardware had paint and pots and pans.
As we sat on the front porch, it was a time to talk, hear stories about the “good ol’ days” from my relatives that didn’t seem all that good to me given the way they described the hardships of the Depression and World War II. We’d break out guitars and play music and hear the same old family stories that we’d all heard a thousand times before. In the sweltering hot nights of the summer, everyone who wasn’t playing a musical instrument had to shell purple hull and black-eyed peas that had been bought that day from the back of a farmer’s truck that would pass through the neighborhood selling peas by the bushel. Shelling peas made one’s fingers turn purple so I hated shelling peas, and thus one of my many reasons for learning to play the guitar!
Sometimes the neighbors or relatives came to sit on the porch and sometimes when things were quiet on our porch, we just listened to what the neighbors were saying on theirs. Many nights, it was for sure better than TV.
The culture I grew up in created a sense of community, but also a sense of accountability. The openness of our lives with our laundry visible to God and all His creation and conversations being heard without the whiz bang electronic surveillance devices we would come to despise meant that we lived with our families, but within a neighborhood and community. And out of a combination of courtesy, old-fashioned manners, and the need to survive by having neighbors you could count on, we didn’t talk “ugly” about neighbors too much. There was a good chance they could hear us. That meant they’d never help shell our peas again.
I miss the front porch culture. Communities where people looked after each other and where we never expected the government to do so had a real strength about them. We were too closely tied together, working-class people struggling to make it paycheck to paycheck, to afford the luxury of losing the friendship of those around us.
As I ponder the current climate in my own political party, I wish we were “front porch Republicans” where we spent time getting to know each other, helping each other, and seeing ourselves as a neighborhood and community where we dared not put our “dirty laundry” on the clothesline for all to see and smell.
Since the summer of 2008, I’ve had the privilege of working for Roger Ailes at Fox News. Roger is a genius. He has his share of critics, but that’s because nearly all of them are insanely jealous of his success. For those of us who have worked for him, it’s clearly understood that the reason he’s been incredibly good at what he does is because of two things:
1. He really is the smartest guy in the room, and it doesn’t matter who’s in the room.
2. He understands that the success of an organization is that the people in the organization feel bonded by a common goal, share an esprit de corps, and that each member of the team builds the others up.
The basic rule of working for Roger is, “Don’t pee inside the tent.” (Although Roger is known to use the more earthy and graphic term.)
It’s one of the many reasons I truly admire and respect him. That attitude is evident pretty much up and down the entire food chain, from the highly paid stars who anchor shows, to the production crew, to the makeup artists, to the people who clean the building. He enjoys heartfelt respect because one thing that everyone in that building knows is that Roger stands with his team and protects them. He is fiercely loyal to those who are part of his empire, and he has no tolerance for the destructive infighting that plagues most high profile, ego-driven media entities. He has created a truly collegial atmosphere in which to work and a place where the peer pressure is to excel. That breeds a spirit of healthy competition where everyone wants to succeed, but not at the expense of others at the network. If someone does well, we all celebrate that success because it floats our entire boat higher in the water.
I wish the Republicans were only guilty of peeing inside the tent. Sadly, some are intent to bring grenades, pull the pin, and toss them under the chair of another Republican. If we would operate by Roger’s rules instead of allowing suicide bombers to determine our direction, we’d have no trouble winning elections at the local, state, and national level.
I watch with sadness when self-proclaimed conservative outside groups raise and spend millions of dollars not to defeat the far left, but to blow up and destroy other conservatives that aren’t deemed “conservative enough.” Having highly contested primaries can be healthy when based on legitimate contrast and competition, but much of the heavy money spent on behalf of anonymous donors too timid to ever run for office themselves ends up giving mortal wounds to people wearing the same uniform. When Major Nidal Hasan opened fire on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, killing fourteen people (thirteen personnel and one unborn child) and wounding over thirty in November 2009, the horror of the shooting was magnified by the fact that at the time, he was wearing the same uniform as the people he was killing. Many of them had survived combat against the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan only to die from the wounds inflicted by someone who supposedly saluted the same flag, but who thought that his view of the world was superior.
When conservatives viciously attack other conservatives and label them “RINO” (Republican in Name Only), they are presuming to have been given the power to determine exactly what the “real” Republican looks like. That always has seemed a bit audacious, to essentially say, “God died and left me in charge.”
I was in the green room backstage at the NRA Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in May 2011, where I was to speak. Michael Reagan, the son of President Reagan, was also on the program that night. Michael is one of my favorite people as he has so many of the great qualities of his father: articulate and witty, a man of true courage and conviction, and yet who hasn’t made his mark by condemning people, but by expressing the ideal. As we visited, we talked about the brutal atmosphere i
n the GOP and he remarked that he wasn’t sure his father could get nominated in today’s GOP climate. I had said the exact same thing before and found some degree of comfort in knowing that the very son of Ronald Reagan felt the same way.
It’s the great irony that many of those seeking to invoke the name if not the mantra of Ronald Reagan and claiming to be “more like him” than others would probably have a hard time supporting the Gipper if he were running for President in 2016 instead of 1980 or 1984. Here was a man who had “evolved” in his view on abortion, but who ultimately was a strong voice and force for the sanctity of life. He didn’t run from the “social issues” or those who espoused them, believing that those were principled views not only of many in the Republican base, but also among Democrats who were Catholic or evangelical. Although he was known for firing the union air traffic controllers (PATCO), he was far from anti-labor or anti-union, having been the president of the Screen Actors Guild himself. He indeed believed that lower taxes were a stimulant to the economy and did lower taxes, but there were taxes he raised both as governor of California and as President, most notably the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982. He was responsible for the greatest immigration amnesty act in America’s history, essentially waving the wand of forgiveness and welcome to over 3 million illegal immigrants in 1986, and he was opposed to a fence. It’s been noted that Reagan granting amnesty to the 3 million probably encouraged the next 8 million to come. And in his personal life, he was a divorced and twice-married man. In today’s culture, such a thing seems utterly insignificant, but there was still some stigma to divorce during that time and there were some in the faith world who had to be convinced that it was okay to vote for a man who had been married more than once. He was noted for his ability to meet with, work with, and compromise on legislation with liberal Speaker Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts.
In this day and age, he would be labeled a “RINO” by conservative bloggers and talk show hosts. I can just imagine that he would be routinely called “Ronald RINO.” He would be yelled at in town hall meetings for promoting amnesty and raising taxes and compromising with Democrats.
Yes, if Reagan were just arriving on the national scene now, or if he were in a hotly contested primary and carried with him the record he had as both a governor and a President, groups like the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund would be raising millions of dollars to run attack ads on the man who is considered the gold standard of conservatism in our lifetime.
This stunning trend of Republicans throwing grenades inside their own tent has taken the party from a place of winning to losing key elections. Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity analyzed donor data and found some startling realities of the “eat your own first” movement:
One in five dollars spent by all super PACs, nonprofit groups and the like on election advocacy came from identifiably conservative groups attacking Republican congressional candidates, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal campaign disclosures covering Jan. 1 to Feb. 28, 2014.
Liberal political groups, in contrast, didn’t spent a dime roughing up Democrats during this time, focusing their efforts exclusively on promoting Democrats or bashing Republicans.
In all, conservative groups spent more than $2.3 million on negative ads targeting Republican candidates, according to FEC records.
That’s more than the $2.1 million conservative groups spent overtly advocating against the election of Democratic candidates.
Their activity also represents a dramatic shift in political strategy from the same block of time during 2010 midterm elections, when conservative organizations didn’t spend cash attacking GOP hopefuls at all, federal records from the time show.
Granted, people can do with their money whatever they want, and some clearly are more interested in destroying other Republicans than beating liberal Democrats, but it never made sense to me to spend more money to tear down the people on your own team than to defeat the real opposition. It’s the equivalent of some members of an NFL team trying to cause injury to a teammate because they don’t like the way he plays, instead of saving their toughest play for Sunday’s opponent.
Abraham Lincoln quoted Jesus and reminded us that a house divided against itself can’t stand. Come to think of it, I’ll doubt ol’ Abe himself could secure the GOP nomination in today’s climate. Why, as I reflect on his record, that lily-livered liberal is nothing but a poser! A real RINO who cuts deals and won’t “take a stand!”
You think I’m kidding? Lincoln was a staunch advocate for public education and public funding of infrastructure that would build rail lines, roads, and water transportation. He supported raising taxes to pay off the increasing debt, and was a compromiser. For sure, he was principled in his commitment to abolish slavery, but he needed to balance the method and time frame to do it and the scope of the implantation of abolition with the political realities of the time. Yep, I’m afraid Abraham Lincoln himself would be branded a “RINO” by those who have deemed themselves the “purer version” of Republicanism.
Is there any Republican who can withstand the extremely narrow, laser-like focus on a few tenets of the conservative movement and be anything but a RINO? I hate the term and have publicly urged people not to apply it. Creating false narratives and labels for fellow conservatives is more an ego trip for those who engage in the name-calling than the mark of those who truly want to restore America to its greatness. I’m quite certain that I’m closer to any Republican in the party than I am to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. Of course, I have my own picks in a primary and sometimes choose to endorse and campaign for one candidate over another. But I’m very careful not to say something about a candidate in a primary that I’d have to explain away in a general election should the other candidate win. If I demonize a Republican candidate in a primary and that candidate wins, and then I’m expected to be a good team player and help the very person I shredded, any endorsement or effort seems transparently phony.
Some of my angst with the “suicide bombers” comes from my personal experience with them. The Club for Growth spent about a million dollars against me in 2008 just in Iowa and almost that much again in South Carolina. They distorted my record as a governor and were quite creative in how they defined what “conservative” really meant. I found out that most of the ads were funded by and inspired by an extremely wealthy Arkansas donor, who inherited a boatload of money. He was upset over my failure to support an initiative he backed that would have immediately eliminated the long-standing sales tax on groceries. I loved the idea of getting rid of the grocery tax, but he was proposing it in 2002 when we were in a deep recession nationwide and when the state was struggling to meet the essentials of the budget. I was never given credit for cutting about 11 percent of a state budget, 91 percent of which was spent on education, prisons, and Medicaid, none of which afforded leeway unless we violated our own state law regarding education funding, turned loose thousands of inmates, and violated the state Medicaid charter by not paying for the legitimate health-care costs of children, the elderly, and the most impoverished in our state. I was rather proud of the fact that I cut over ninety-four taxes, took the state from almost a billion-dollar deficit to almost a billion-dollar surplus, rebuilt the road system that was crumbling, brought innovations to health-care policy that were heralded nationally, and greatly increased test scores in K-12 and dramatically upped the number of people attending college. Oh, and did I mention that I did that with a legislature that was the most lopsided and blue in the nation? Eighty-nine of a hundred in the Arkansas House were Democrats and thirty-one of thirty-five members of the Senate were Democrats. The state General Assembly was more Democrat than those of Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, or Oregon. I can assure you that it was tough sledding to work with a legislative body in which my party didn’t even have the votes to sustain a governor’s veto or even block a budget bill (which required seventy-five votes), much less pass one!<
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But the hostile legislative environment I faced turned out to be valuable in teaching me how to actually govern. I can assure you that it’s much easier to campaign than to govern. And even easier to just talk about it as a commentator. I’ve done all three—which puts me in a pretty rare position to know the difference.
Groups like Club for Growth are basically “pay for play.” If you have a lot of money and want to destroy someone running for office, regardless of the reason, you can anonymously write a check to the “Club” and it will do the dirty work for you. The donor can hide behind the skirt of the organization and never come out to be accountable for the attacks. It’s a coward’s way to fight. Well, a coward with a lot of cash and ill will toward Republicans. After the 2008 election, I was persuaded to sit down with the leaders of the Club for Growth to try and find common ground. One of the original charter members was a wonderful friend and strong pro-life advocate and a leader in the Fair Tax movement, which I strongly support and pushed hard for in my campaign. The late Leo Linbeck was one of those rare people one meets in politics who was in it for all the right reasons. Highly principled and a man of deep faith who was very active in his Houston, Texas, Catholic church, he arranged for me to go to D.C. for a meeting, supposedly to clear the air. It didn’t go well. The club staff couldn’t give credible reasons for attacking the fact that revenue in Arkansas had to be raised in order to build roads; an initiative that had been approved by 80 percent of the voters, when both Mitt Romney in Masschusetts and Ronald Reagan in California had done the same as governors. Pat Toomey, then a former congressman from Pennsylvania, and currently a U.S. senator, was the head of Club for Growth at the time. I left the meeting feeling as if I had wasted my time because it didn’t appear that the CFG was driven by facts, but by checkbooks of those who wanted to target someone for character assassination. Later, when Toomey joined with a Senate Democrat to pass some gun control legislation in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting tragedy and got pummeled by conservatives for “becoming a squish” on the Second Amendment, I wondered if he ever thought about the many broadsides he had leveled against other Republicans. I heard him on TV lament how he was being misunderstood and how unfair it was to paint him as not supporting the Second Amendment. Forgive me if I was not moved to tears. “They that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” said Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 26, verse 52.
God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy Page 22