Republicans who support third party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo are being denounced by some party loyalists as “turncoats,” while others fret that under Colorado law, the Colorado Republican Party will slip into minor party status if Dan Maes gets less than 10% of the vote.
That tells you how much confidence Republicans have in their nominee if party leaders worry publicly about getting less than 10% of the vote in the contest for Governor.
But for a moment, let’s stick to the principles involved, not the personalities. The question facing many loyal Republicans in Colorado in 2010 is this: should Republican voters apply the “Bill Buckley Rule” and support the “most conservative candidate who has a chance to win”? Or must they always support the party’s nominee no matter how weak his qualifications or how remote his chance of winning?
Is party loyalty a principle that must never, ever be abandoned or is its value overblown?
When you think about it, party loyalty is not a natural American trait. We are a nation of mavericks and independent thinkers. We can remember lessons taught in school civics classes about how important it is for voters to always look for the “best qualified candidate regardless of party.” Later we learn that political parties do serve a useful purpose in providing a shortcut and filter for voters’ choices. While the average voter may study carefully the candidates in one, two or three major races, few will do that for a dozen contests. That’s why most voters conclude that preferring one party over others is a rational way to economize the time devoted to scrutinizing candidates. It’s a useful tool and a convenience.
As a lifelong Republican loyalist, activist and former Reagan appointee, I can attest to the power of party identification. However, party loyalty is a continuum with many stops along the road from simple party identification to straight-party-line voting. In movies, novels and folklore, party-line voting is usually portrayed as either lazy behavior or something engineered to benefit a big-city political machine.
Who are the most vocal advocates for “party-above-person” voting? One group consists of the party’s paid staff, the county chairmen and precinct captains. These are individuals who feel an ethical obligation to support every candidate on the party ticket. When handed a lemon by the nomination process, their sworn duty is to make lemonade. The possibility of rotten lemons is not in their playbook.
The other vocal advocate for party-above-person is the partisan ideologue — libertarian, conservative, socialist or greenie — who believes that a party’s platform and core principles provide a sufficiently reliable guide to the future behavior of politicians.
What happens when that assumption is openly rejected by the large majority of voters? That’s what we have in 2010 when voter cynicism and party disaffection are epidemic. After all, what is the tea party movement but a revolt against a business-as-usual loyalty to party labels? Tea party and 9-12 activists want candidates they can trust to stick to sound principles, not adhere to a party line. Conservative Republicans especially have seen Republican politicians routinely stray from the Republican platform and principles over the past 20 years, so they have little reason to trust that always and everywhere, “party trumps person.”
In these circumstances, the rational, conscientious voter may reasonably conclude that a candidate’s integrity and track record on major issues are better predictors of future behavior than party affiliation alone. Most voters do not want to be propagandized with the strange notion that integrity and love of country reside only in one political party.
Nor are chicanery and dishonesty confined to a single party. What to do if the party’s nomination process is sabotaged by the infusion of $500,000 in paid advertisements by the opposition, aimed helping nominate the weakest candidate? You can’t help wonder whether Dan Maes has found time to send a thank you note to the Democrat Governors Association and Pat Stryker for the three-week media barrage against Scott McInnis?
Both history and common sense tell us that while party loyalty is a good thing, it is not the only thing. Everyone knows that in states and counties where the Republicans are greatly outnumbered by Democrats, the Republican Party routinely encourages cross-party voting —“Vote for the man, not the party!”– as do Democrats in similar situations. In fact, the numbers in Colorado show an electorate remarkably free of party loyalties, with a full third of registered voters choosing not to affiliate with any party at all. Thus, “party above person” mantra now being mouthed by fearful Republican loyalists smells like a misconceived blend of stupidity and hypocrisy.
Would a Tancredo victory on the American Constitution Party ticket spell the demise of the Colorado Republican Party? No, of course not. No one seriously doubts that if elected, Governor Tancredo would appoint tons of Republicans to executive branch agencies and govern in line with the same principles he has advocated consistently for thirty years as a conservative Republican. The problem of minor party status for the GOP created by the suicidal Maes candidacy can be fixed by a one-line amendment to state election law.
The dwindling number of Colorado Republican officials who are hawking the “party above person” principle in 2010 do not have a tough sell, they have an impossible sell. Americans don’t like being put into a straitjacket and told it’s a life vest.
Charles Heatherly has been an active Republican since college when he was state chairman of the Arizona College YR Federation and chairman of Youth for Goldwater. A resident of Colorado since 2002, he served in three management positions in the Reagan administration and worked in Tom Tancredo’s congressional office as research director. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
