In a Wednesday afternoon conversation with my pal American Greatness writer Elizabeth Fortunato, she broached the subject of moderate and center left Republicans joining the Democrats to vote in their primaries, thus bringing the party back to the center left. What a good idea.
There are at least 10 percent of Republicans, many of the anti-Trump types, who would be happy as Democrats. They have not, and will not, be pleased with the populist slant of the party that is and will be the reality for some time to come. Many of them have already deserted the Republicans with their votes but not with their party registration. Perhaps it is high time they do for the sake of a viable free market democratic two party system.
Granted there are another 2-4 percent of Republicans, the looniest of the Trump bitter enders, who belong in a nice cult somewhere. You know the type. These are people who bang on about the Constitution, but when Mike Flynn suggests martial law and military rule they sign right on. They’d be more at home in Rome in 1932 than in America today.
The suggestion above would work the opposite of leftist migrations to formerly red states. One doesn’t have to be Methuselah to remember when California and Colorado, not to mention Virginia, Arizona, and Georgia, were solid red states. A big part of the switch was that California Bolsheviks booked, there were still many remaining in California after they left, to GOP states and brought their hideous politics with them. But in this plan nobody has to move. Just re-register to reform the Democrats from within. If this became a public campaign it could even encourage moderate Democrats to retake their party from the AOCs and Sanderistas.
Now as amusing as it is to trash the Democrats, a viable republic needs a responsible opposition party. The majority, in hopeful case the Republicans (who, after this realignment could properly rebrand themselves the Conservative Party), rarely has a complete monopoly on wisdom. A proper opposition keeps the majority on their toes and honest. But presently we do not have a proper center left opposition, or incoming government, fit to hold power in a constitutional republic.
We gave a grievance brigade of authoritarian socialists, race hustlers, and outright Marxists, all looking for their piece of the power pie. How they get it is of no importance to them. That is up to and including the imposition of martial law and a socialist regime to carry out their diktats. Isn’t it interesting that on ideas like martial law, the Mike Flynn supporters and the Marxist revolutionaries are reading from the same page?
A sensible center left Democrat Party could also lessen the acrimony and polarization between the two major political parties in this country. But it won’t happen from within the present Democrat Party. But former center left and moderate Republicans could make it happen from outside, then inside, the party. They should.