“There’s nothing in the law that says the parties must bend to the reddest or bluest of constituents or lobbyists or financiers. Things were a lot smoother in the days when political parties were coalitions and members of each could talk to each other without fear of scandal.”
—This space, last week
And just like that, another example of the political parties bending to the reddest or bluest of special interests. This time, the phenomenon made the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
The story isn’t surprising these days, but it might have been just six or seven years ago: Almost all of the people running for the U.S. House of Representatives as Democrats this year are pro-gun control. Including some of the same politicians who used to be against more regulations on guns just a few years back.
The national Democrats
they a flips
year—making a Republican House district a Democratic one. Thus winning back control of the whole chamber. Of those 63 would-be pols, 62 support expanded background checks for gun purchases, and they’d better if they know what their party wants. (The lone Democrat among the 63 not running on gun control is from a West Virginia district that Donald Trump won by 50 percentage points two years ago.)
This isn’t an editorial about the good, bad and ugly of gun laws. Surely our readers know where we stand by now. And why not have background checks for gun show sales? That editorial has appeared here, too.
But there used to be a time when the political parties had room for competing views on these matters. Now, not so much.
Who can remember—who can forget?—the time back in 2004 when John Kerry, running for president, marched into an Ohio shop and announced, in his best staged rural accent: “Can I get me a hunting license here?” Or a particular Clinton named Hillary telling her duck hunting stories at a Wisconsin campaign stop back in 2008?
Imagine. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton as moderates.
Once upon a time, Democratic congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio was A-rated as far as the NRA was concerned. His last grade was a D. He told the Journal, because of the latest mass shootings, if you’re “not doing anything, you hold that position to your own peril, political peril.”
To heck with political peril. What about the real kind? We wonder how many of these Democrats would agree that the nation’s schools need more armed police on campus. And why a sign saying No Guns Allowed at a movie theater might be ringing the bell for the crazies out there.
But now we’re talking guns again. Better we should bemoan that the two parties are hardly able to talk to each other at all.
Even with all its evident faults, we think the two-party system is too easily despised and its value much under-appreciated. It certainly beats one of those coalition governments that keep unraveling every time a cabinet member gets his feelings hurt. A two-party system is the key to American democracy. It makes each of the Big Two clearly accountable. Throw in a third major party (see Perot, R.) and accountability—for good or bad policies—on a national level becomes confusing.
But it seems the Democrats are taking the kind of stand on guns that Republicans take on . . . guns. Only a mirror image. Try to see in your mind’s eye a Republican trying to win a primary by bucking his party. These days, it’s the party’s way or the highway.
Liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats are as rare as Homers and Miltons. Which is why Americans continue to see this chasm widen.