My colleague, Vince Conti, raised objection to my column last week. Believing that others within our community may have similar opposition, I asked Vince if he would be willing to allow me to publish his thoughts, as a guest columnist in my stead; he agreed, and it is posted below.
As an aside, what he stated to me, but did not include below, was he felt that my column was directed to all Democrats, which they were not. My column referred to the national Democratic Party, not New Jersey Democrats, whom I find to operate much differently from the Democrats in Washington.
Ill Serving the General Good
By VINCE CONTI
Art Hall published an editorial Jan. 8, in which he praised Jeff Van Drew as a man of principle who was forced to change parties by the national Democratic Party’s rigid adherence to its far left agenda and the “stranglehold the leadership has on their members.”
As owner and publisher of the Herald, Hall has every right to use its editorial pages to promote Van Drew and praise his new alignment with the Republican Party.
Hall sees a man of principle who felt impeachment was wrong and who feared the creeping socialism of his party’s platform. Perhaps so. One is certainly free to accept that interpretation.
The facts, as we know them, are open to other interpretations as well.
Van Drew represents a district in which impeachment was going to be a hard sell. Finessing the issue proved difficult. Van Drew voted to censure the president. He stated unequivocally that he thought the president had “misbehaved,” and he said he was “concerned” about the actions coming from the White House. Many New Jersey Democrats saw that as insufficient to the moment.
Following his vote on impeachment, internal polling told Van Drew he was rapidly losing support at home from Democrats. He faced a primary challenge and the real possibility that he could not win reelection as a Democrat. Within days, Van Drew was in the Oval Office for a photo op, declaring his “undying support” for the president he had voted to censure.
This was a point in time when the president, suffering the sting of impeachment, welcomed the political support of a first term representative who had been in office less than a year.
Less than a month after Van Drew assured constituents he was “absolutely not changing parties,” he did so at that precise moment when he could gain presidential support for his reelection campaign as a Republican. In fact, the president’s public support was one of the conditions of the switch.
One could interpret that political survival rather than principle was at work here. Art Hall chose not to do so, which is his right.
Hall then expresses surprise that others have not also left this partisan, factional Democratic Party, overlooking entirely the partisan, factional Republican Party he holds out as a better home for men and women of principle. Really, Art?
Is it possible to ignore totally what happens to Republican Party officials who dare to utter a word of criticism of this president? Is the lockstep voting of the Right so different from what Hall decries on the Left?
Support for traditional Republican principles is a good thing. The same can be said for the defense of Democrat Party values. The opposition and interplay of the parties has benefited the nation through its history.
Today, independent political thought is in danger on both sides. What we have lost is any sense of nuance. Where is my home if I would support stronger immigration controls but still advocate action on fossil-fuel-induced climate change? In this, and so many instances, the blending of positions has become an act of disloyalty.
Our politics today call for people to accept a portfolio of views as a ticket to party acceptance. Art Hall’s blind spot is in thinking this is solely a phenomenon of the political Left.
Hall’s editorial invoked George Washington’s advice against political parties. Somehow, Hall implies that Washington would reserve his wrath for the unprincipled Democrats.
Hall is right. Washington did worry about faction, about a tendency to seek petty personal gain and to allow prejudice to divert us from the common good. As early as 1783, he called upon Americans to “make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.”
For Washington, this was one of the “pillars on which the glorious fabric of our Independence and National Character must be supported.”
