Former U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander published a new book talking about his time as the governor of Tennessee, his time in the Senate and what changed so significantly about the GOP in that time.
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In an excerpt published by The Harvard Gazette, Alexander said that up until the past few decades, Republicans and Democrats both wanted much of the same things, they merely disagreed about how to get there. Once activist groups got involved and began contributing to campaigns for ideological reasons, things changed.
“When I began in politics in 1966, the East Tennessee Republican base was composed of voters who were patriotic, churchgoing and leery of the federal government,” recalled the ex-lawmaker. “Because most were descended from Civil War Lincolnites, they were generally pro-civil rights. The state party organization was the custodian of ‘the base.’ There were not many other intermediaries between an elected official and the voters.”
Staying in touch with “the base,” back then, involved actually attending public events and shaking hands.
“During the 1970s and 1980s, new organizations inserted themselves between the elected official and the voter,” he continued. “They became the ‘new base.’ The state party was reduced to being a fundraising machine and producer of operatives who consumed most of the money raised.”
It grew a new GOP base that focused more on Washington D.C., than the states. Talk radio show hosts began rising and Fox News “spread the gospel,” he said.
That “new base” wasn’t a problem when he first ran for office in 1978, he said. Issues like abortion “rarely came up.” He recalled working with Democrats for plans involving “better schools and roads, clean water, and healthy children.”
He complained, “Republican House Leader Newt Gingrich’s confrontational politics made it look like activist Republican governors and nay-saying Republican members of Congress were not on the same team. Another difference was that congressional Republicans were winning elections, and Republican governors and legislators were not.”
He recalled a meeting where he invited Gingrich and other GOP leaders to talk about how they could better work together.
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Alexander recalled telling them, “Washington issues are tremendously important and fascinating, but when we get together, that’s all Republicans talk about. Democrat governors are running up and down the street proposing programs to improve schools, pick up the garbage, fix roads and make children healthier — and they are getting elected.”
“If I were in Congress, I would be voting ‘no’ to more federal control as Newt is doing. And if he were governor, he would be hard at work fixing schools and roads and health care — as I’m doing,” he quoted the speech. He mentioned that Gingrich agreed. They gave it the name the “New Federalism” and it began helping them win elections.
Once he went to Washington as a U.S. senator, Alexander said he watched the evolution of the party to a greater extent. He recalled being labeled as a “partisan attack dog” which was laughable since he was such a middle-of-the-road kind of guy. He noted he detests the word “moderate” because it’s a “lazy” description.
“I especially resented self-righteous political pharisees who claimed to be a better Republican than I was, in the way someone might wander into Sunday school and claim to be a better Christian,” he wrote. “I am a very Republican Republican, a bona fide Abraham Lincoln mount in Republican descended from Union soldiers who voted like they shot and who made certain that our congressional district had not elected a Democrat to Congress since Lincoln was president.”
The Senate in which he served quickly became one in which it wasn’t the moderates vs. the conservatives, but between grand-standers and those who wanted to govern.
“My priority of governing didn’t suit the Washington D.C., political pharisees who had begun to infiltrate Tennessee Republicans,” said Alexander. “It didn’t help that I had always worked with Democrats and tried to represent all Tennesseans. During 2009, I provided more ammunition by voting to support Obama 10 percent of the time, according to Congressional Quarterly.”
He closed by lamenting that some of the most legendary lawmakers in history, like Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen (Ill.), may not have made it in a world of “Digital Democracy” that hinges on soundbites, trolling and being inflexible. He hopes that Tennessee can recruit more candidates who look to progress rather than one-party rule.
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