A text from my brother alerted me to a guest commentary piece in our local paper today by Tom Licata of the Ethan Allen Institute titled “Memo to the Vermont Republican Party” and I was pleased, well pleased probably isn’t the right word, to see his take on the Vermont Republican party largely agrees my own.
This piece was written in response to a response from Senator Joe Benning to a note Mr. Licata had emailed Vermont Republican legislators titled “Grow a pair.” The note in question was the text of an editorial that appeared in the Caledonian Record along with a reference to Winston Churchill. Senator Benning responded by saying he and other Republicans had to walk a tightrope by opposing Democrat initiatives while not losing numbers, that he “spent approximately one hour on the floor of the senate in 2011 laying out why I thought it[single-payer healthcare] wouldn’t work,” and that it is time “for all of us to start concentrating on our commonalities.”
Tom Licata begins his response with:
Let’s analyze Benning’s response: Republicans are constantly developing “strategies” of means rather than ends; they debated why single payer “wouldn’t work” rather than why it “shouldn’t”; and now they seek ends in “commonalities” rather than in “principals[sic].”
You cannot defeat the ideology of Progressivism without comprehending its philosophic ends nor succeed over them without knowledgeable conviction of your own defense.
Compare that to what I wrote in my posts from December 2013 “Republicans Need to Stop Trying to be Democrat-Lites” written following reports on the meeting of the Vermont GOP featuring special guest Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey in which they discussed the need to rebrand the Republican party.
How might Republicans accomplish this re-branding? It is explained by David Sunderland, the newly elected head of the Vermont Republican Party, this way, “Every Vermonter has different thoughts on how to move Vermont forward, of course. The Vermont GOP now, once again, welcomes them all.” This means that the re-branded “cocktail party” Republicans will have no principles. They will welcome equally those who believe that the state has the right to compel you to buy insurance or use “green” energy and those who believe that the individual should be left alone to pursue his own happiness with the government only protecting them from force and fraud. With such a “big tent” policy, the fundamental principles will always drift towards the worst, the most statist, beliefs of the group members. This will guarantee that Republicans will continue their drift in the direction of ever more statism, despite their rhetoric to the contrary.
Tom Licata picks up this same theme, the lack of firm principles, writing:
Other disturbing trends include Senate Minority Leader Benning advocating for a Progressive national single-payer system (“Now What,” Dec. 18 VTDigger) followed by Lt. Gov. Scott advocating a state takeover of schools via a clone of the Progressive “Green Mountain Care Board,” (“Scott Calls for Central Board to Regulate School Costs, Oct 17, VTDigger). These are the supposed opposition leaders to ideological Progressivism?
Again, compare that to what I wrote in my June, 2014 post, “Death of a Concept – Vermont Republican.” Referring to a comment that Senator Benning left of my original post claiming that, “We [Republicans] have repeatedly said we support the following core values of the Republican Party: a free market economy, low taxes, limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility.”
Just six months after making this statement it appears that his dedication to these principles is not as strong as he would have people believe. Since writing the post I have heard him make statements that caused me to doubt his claims, such as one in January supporting a national plan for universal health insurance and more recently claiming a “right to know” when speaking in support of Vermont’s new GMO labelling law. (The right to know is a complete equivocation on what rights actually are, but that is a topic for another post.) He authored an op-ed that appeared in the Caledonian Record on June 24th that confirmed for me that he either does not understand these principles or he does not actually believe in and support them.
You can find a PDF version of the op-ed “Governor It’s Time for Plan ‘A'” here, but his central and ultimate solution for health care is to expand “Medicare in increments until it covers the entire population; everybody in, nobody out.” As I asked later in my post, “if you can find the free market economy, limited government, individual liberty and low taxes here I would gladly have it pointed out to me.”
There is a lot of great material in Tom Licata’s commentary about the importance of understanding the fundamental difference between Progressivism and Constitutionalism and why this is absolutely necessary in order to successfully fight for Constitutionalism. I would go a couple of steps further in this regard. Politics is not a fundamental branch of philosophy. It rests on ethics which in turn rests on epistemology, how we know what we know, and metaphysics, the nature of reality. To truly defend the politics of individual rights and Constitutionalism, I would simply call this capitalism, you need to understand what those ideas rest upon. An even cursory discussion of these is beyond the scope of this post but suffice to say without this foundation you cannot really defend these ideas and you end up saying, as today’s Republicans (and sadly even the Constitution to some extent) do, “I believe in individual rights, but…”
Hopefully Tom’s commentary will be available online as I think everyone who is interested in fighting for individual rights could benefit from reading it. He concludes:
If the Vermont Republican Party cannot muster the courage displayed by their Progressive adversaries; if they cannot muster the fortitude to defend the underpinnings of Constitutionalism; and if they cannot denounce the totalitarian nature of Progressivism; then Dewey’s prescient message will come to pass and Vermont Republicans will be deservedly known as the “wishy-washy and weak” party.
Comparing once again to “Republicans Need to Stop Trying to be Democrat-Lites”:
If the Republican party continues their tradition to re-branding themselves to be more like the Democrats, embracing so-called “compassionate conservatism,” there will be no real choice for voters. When presented with a “full-strength” and consistent Democrat and an inconsistent Democrat-lite, why would voters chose the latter? Even if they do get elected, what benefit will there be to the country when the Democrat and the Democrat-lite hold the same basic, statist, principles?
And lastly from “Death of a Concept – Vermont Republican”:
Concepts, and the words that represent them, are man’s means of dealing mentally with more than is immediately available to his senses. They are formed by integrating items in reality by an essential characteristic, which also serves to differentiate them from other things. For example, the shape of all tables is what allows us to integrate them, see them as similar, as well as to differentiate them from chairs and beds. If the suggestions given here are what pass in Vermont for support of Republican principles, then the very concept “Republican” soon will cease to have any meaning in Vermont as there is no essential difference between it and the concept Democrat.
Perhaps when diverse voices ranging from a virtually unknown blogger like myself to established commentators such as Tom Licata are pointing out the necessity of actually fighting for the principles they claim to support, the Republican party will begin to do so. Without this dedication to principles, the difference between the Republicans and Democrats can be summed up in a quote from Scott Milne early in his campaign against Governor Shumlin – the difference between “radical and progressive,” which Milne saw as “good sometimes”, and “radical, progressive and reckless,” which is how he described the Shumlin administration.
This is simply a difference of speed, not direction.