Former congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma has announced that he has left the Republican Party.
Says Edwards:
I worked to build the Republican party. I became chairman of the local Young Republican Club and built it to several times its original size. Then I became state chairman. Then national vice chairman.
In 1974 I ran for Congress against a Democrat who had held the seat for 24 years. … Two years later, I flipped the seat, becoming the first Republican elected to Congress from Oklahoma City in half a century.
I joined the Reagan campaign in 1980, leading a group of policy advisory task forces co-chaired by Republican senators and House members. I moved up in the House Republican leadership and became chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. Altogether I served eight terms in the House.
I have been a Republican for 62 years. I have been a Goldwater conservative, a Reagan conservative, and a W conservative.
And I have now left the Republican party. A party that has been at the center of my entire adult life. A party that defined me to others and to myself.
So why did Edwards leave?
In a word: Trump. He left because the Republican Party “has become the opposite of what it was.” It “has become a cult idolizing a ruler, a trasher of institutions of democracy driven by falsehoods and hatreds.” There was “no evidence of fraud” in the election. Trump supporters “attacked the United States Capitol.” Afterward, “nearly 150 Republican members of Congress still fed the falsehood that the validity of the election was in question.” Concludes Edwards: “I’ve left the Republican party. I will not be going back.”
What took him so long?
Republicans claim to be the party of the Constitution. In the Republican Party platform, they say that the Constitution “was written not as a flexible document, but as our enduring covenant.” They maintain that “all legislation, regulation, and official actions must conform to the Constitution’s original meaning as understood at the time the language was adopted.” They reaffirm “the Constitution’s fundamental principles: limited government, separation of powers, individual liberty, and the rule of law.”
Republicans love to quote Ronald Reagan’s dictum that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
Republicans regularly recite their conservative mantra of the Constitution, limited government, federalism, traditional values, capitalism, the free market, fiscal conservatism, free enterprise, less regulation, tax reform, free trade, property rights, balanced budgets, law and order, and a strong national defense.
But Republicans don’t actually believe in any of these things—not even in a strong national defense. Everyone wants a strong national defense. When Republicans say they want a strong national defense, what they mean is that they want a strong national offense to meddle in the affairs of other countries, fight foreign wars, bomb countries into submission, and maintain an empire of troops and bases around the world.
In addition to being the party of the warfare state and an interventionist foreign policy, Republicans are also the party of the welfare and national security states.
Republicans are the party of:
- Anti-discrimination laws
- Food stamps
- Social Security
- Farm subsidies
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- Federal involvement in education
- Foreign aid
- Refundable tax credits
- Federal funding for space exploration and research
- Drug prohibition laws
- Gambling prohibition laws
- AMTRAK
- Welfare programs
- The TSA
- NSA spying on Americans
- The Export-Import Bank
- The Patriot Act
- Subsidies to art and culture
- Grants for scientific and medical research
- Pell Grants
- Planned Parenthood funding
- Bailouts and stimulus packages
- Section 8 housing vouchers
- Travel restrictions to Cuba
- A government health care plan as long as it isn’t Obamacare
- Federal flood insurance
- The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)
- Federal price gouging laws
- A federal vaccine program
When the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress for six years under Bill Clinton and for two years under Barack Obama they did absolutely nothing to eliminate or scale back any of these things. When Republicans had absolute control of the government for over four years under George W. Bush and for two years under Donald Trump, they again did absolutely nothing to eliminate or scale back any of these things. And most of them they fully embraced and some of them they expanded.
As I have said on numerous occasions: The only limited government sought by Republicans is one limited to control by Republicans.
Yes, Mickey Edwards left the Republican Party. But not for any good reason.
