It looks as if the Democrat party has begun its long-overdue disintegration. The Dems, struck with unanticipated body blows from the democratic socialists and Islamists this year, is suffering the departure of thousands — if not tens of thousands — of previously faithful party members. Included among these are former Democrat strategist Julian Epstein and attorney and longtime liberal spokesman Alan Dershowitz. Fetterman and Carville are not likely to be far behind.
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Some of these political refugees will settle for being independents. Some will abandon politics outright and turn to private life. But others will find their way to the GOP, as Dershowitz has.
That’s all to the good. But there’s also one caveat here. There exists a long-understood phenomenon in which political escapees from left-wing hellholes such as California, Massachusetts, or Minnesota relocate to healthy conservative states such as Texas or Florida, or – a particularly pertinent example here, Colorado, at one time a solid red state. Once there, they start pushing the same policies, laws, and types of candidates who brought their home states to disaster. It’s as if they’re afflicted with some kind of ideological OCD that compels them to spend their time scrubbing out imaginary political stains wherever they go.
This could well happen with former Dems looking for a home in the GOP. It would not be the first time. Back in the 1970s, a large number of Cold War liberals, many of them New Yorkers, left the Democrats after the party was taken over by New Leftists who dumped the anti-communism of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. They soon installed themselves within the conservative movement, becoming the neocons of leftist black legend. Much of their influence was beneficial, supporting the anti-communist impulse at a particularly bad time and giving new life to movement conservatism, which had largely given up the political fight for the glories of beyond-the-beltway think tanks.
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But no small number of them also retained much of the social thinking of liberal-leftism, including the welfare state, the broadest possible interpretation of civil rights, and Keynesian economics. They became extremely influential in GOP circles, eventually leading to the disastrous policies of the W administration and the #NeverTrump reaction of the last ten years.
We don’t need any kind of sequel. Worst case would involve ex-Democrats colluding with and reviving the RINOs, who have also been headed for well-deserved extinction.
So, while we should welcome these people, and treat them as sincere, we should also keep our eyes open.
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