The Liberty Platform
Yesterday I got chastised by at least one reader for never offering any solutions, just criticisms. It reminded me that I haven’t gotten on my personal soapbox lately and harrangued my audience with the notion that I think we should adopt a western and southwest red state strategy using a platform of personal liberty, economic responsibility, land conservation, energy independence and effective national security. If you’ve heard this before, feel free to move on. Otherwise, here is my super-duper message package to capture at least a couple of western red states and tip the balance to our side.
I understand that building a coalition of rural western states and big city blue states has its problems. But we have to find common ground with some red states somewhere and this seems like the most fertile ground requiring the least compromise on matters of primary importance to both. That’s the only way a coalition can be successful. You can’t force people into a mold, you have to mold the coalition around shared principles.
In a great post discussing the Alito nomination, Barbara at Mahablog articulates one part of this platform as she talks about the paternalist right wing:
The provision represents another rightie tendency, which is that righties essentially distrust human beings to make their own decisions. We saw that during the Terri Schiavo flap, when all manner of legislation was proposed that would have allowed government to intrude in a family’s end-of-life decisions. To a rightie, human beings are mindless beasts who need to be controlled by Big Brother so they don’t make “bad” decisions; i.e., decisions with which the rightie disagrees. And righties always assume that people who make these “bad” decisions have done so because they don’t think. Notice all the legislation imposed by states intended to make women reflect on a decision to abort, as if women can’t think for themselves. It’s beyond their comprehension that most women who decide to abort do understand exactly what a pregnancy is and realize that abortion is a serious matter.
“Republicans don’t trust people to make their own decisions.” It’s that simple. They want to tell people how to live. I believe that is a simple argument that plays ever so subtly on the Republican mantra that says “they don’t trust you with your own money!” We should steal it since they’ve already trained the ears of Americans to hear that formulation.
Survey USA found that while Utah and Idaho are among the most conservative on social issues in the country, many of the other western red states are quite liberal. Here’s a breakdown on choice:
23. Montana 53 percent “Pro-choice”
26. Arizona 56%
27. New Mexico 56%
30. Wyoming 57%
34. Colorado 61%
38. Oregon 62%
38. Nevada 64%
41. Washington 63%
46. California 65%
We do not need to pander on choice in order to win elections. In fact, we end up being mealy-mouthed and unappetising to both sides. Choice is a majority position and we should consistently articulate it as trusting people to make their own decisions about their personal lives. Period. Don’t get into religious interpretations. Don’t talk about the fetus. Just simply and straightforwardly say that people should be trusted to make their own decisions about complicated personal matters, that it’s nobody else’s business. It will make some people mad, to be sure. But it’s simple and it gets to the heart of the matter. People want to know where we stand and that is where we stand.
People should be able to freely practice their religion as long as they don’t expect anyone else to practice it or pay for it. People should be able to feel secure that their their homes, health and families are in the private sphere, where government has the least interest.
The western and southwestern states are far less amenable to intrusions on personal liberty, far less likely to be hyper-religious, far more “live and let live” than the southern red states. There is less history of racism than in either the south or the big cities (that’s not saying all that much) and they have been leaders in women’s equality. As the Republican party becomes a Christian dominated party of big government, this group is becoming unmoored from the GOP and is open to a new message from us.
They don’t like taxes, which is why economics have to be presented in terms of responsibility rather than entitlement, which they are. Nobody likes taxes, but responsible people recognise that taxes are unavoidable if we are to have a decent society. “It is irresponsible to burden business with outrageous health care costs and individuals with the fear of imminent catastrophe — the government needs to fix this problem.” “It’s irresponsible for the wealthy not to accept their rightful share of the burden to keep this country strong.” “It’s irresponsible for the government not to keep our promises to each generation by ensuring that social security stays healthy and that we don’t leave behind a mountain of debt for our children.”
They also don’t like corruption and cronyism. It goes against the western ethos of both rugged individualism and communitarian necessity. The dishonest Republican political machine has to be grating at their very marrow. This issue is, of course, central to our critique of the Republicans generally, but I think it carries extra weight with the anti-authoritarian west. They don’t like Washington much anyway. Washington corruption is particularly distasteful.
They are growing increasingly concerned about environmental degradation. Global warming affects people who work and live on the land — people in the west are more concerned with the environment in general than those in the south. This is an area of common cause. Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana has set forth some ideas about liquid coal that should be explored. Alternative energy is, in my opinion, a winning issue for us all around.
On national security, I think the simple answer is to point out that Republican unilateralism is creating enemies and bankrupting the country. There is a lot of evidence that people are resenting the amount of money that’s being spent on Iraq. The way to deal with this is to say that if the Republicans had followed the model of Bush’s father and worked with a real coalition toward goals that everyone could agree upon, we would not be bearing this kind of financial burden alone. We will never hesitate to act alone if the national security of the US is at stake. With Iraq, the administration claimed that we were in danger from a threat that didn’t exist and we took on the enormous cost of that mistake alone because the vast majority of the world didn’t agree with that assessment. We need to make sure that never happens again.
A few of the areas that are problematic for this coalition are guns, business regulation, unions and immigration. On the first I would adopt a states’ rights position and use governor Dean’s formulation that the rural areas have different concerns about guns than the cities and so there can be no national, one size fits all solution. Big city cops have different concerns than those in Montana.
We should argue that if business acts responsibly toward its community, its customers and its employees, they have no beef with us. Our society depends upon business being successful and there are many millions of them around the country that are both responsible and profitable. They should be rewarded, not penalized, for doing the right thing.
Unions need to take a page from California. They have been enormously successful in re-casting thier image here by simply pointing out that union members aren’t “special interests” they are cops, firefighters, nurses, teachers, state employees. Once people see unions again as average working people instead of the stereotype of mobbed-up “On the Waterfront” crooks or ridiculous patronage machines, they tend to look at the whole issue differently. We should encourage the unions to work together to send out this message of average working people you depend upon every day to take care of you when you are in need. It’s worked extremely well in California and I think it can work everywhere.
Immigration is going to be tough. I think we will have to look at the southwestern governors Napolitano and Richardson for some guidance. This issue is the canary in a coalmine of a faltering economy and it must be dealt with wisely. It’s becoming huge around the country and the Democrats have to find the proper balance. I don’t have the answers on this one.
The other side of all this is that the mountain red state voters need to recognise that the blue states are not the enemy of Real America. It’s a two way street. We should ask them for some consideration of our culture just as they ask us for theirs. These are the live and let live people. If we let them know that we have no interest in turning Helena or Las Vegas into San Francisco, maybe they will grant that it’s ok for San Francisco and Boston to have their own ways too. We have more in common than we have differences.
This discussion of what “real America” is, is a good starting point for launching this coalition. Despite what the GOP is trying to sell, Real America is all of us. The red state west is one element of the current Republican coalition that may just agree with that. We need them — and frankly they need us. Their unique culture of independence and self-sufficiency is far more threatened by what the modern Republicans are doing than anything the Democrats have ever done.
I’m sure there are huge holes in my plan. I’ve never sat down and really worked on it. But others have, people who are in the trenches looking at how we can build a Democratic majority now that the Republicans have a total lock on the south. I’m not saying that we should abandon the south — but we cannot depend upon it. History shows that the south is a voting block unto itself and almost always goes together. It’s a very tough nut for us to crack, particularly if we wish to keep any principles. There are better ways.
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