By now, I’m guessing that most North Carolinians who follow politics are aware of Friday’s departure of Rep. Michael Decker of Forsyth County from the Republican Party, within which he has been a stalwart conservative lawmaker for nearly two decades. Joining the Democratic Party, Decker says he’ll vote for Speaker Jim Black to keep his job. The House goes 60-60. People are falling all over themselves to predict what this means for legislative politics, the budget, taxes, and other issues.
I’d like to pursue a different tack: how, in retrospect, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont was a paragon of political and civic virtue.
You remember Jeffords, right? A few months into the 2001 congressional session, then-Republican Jeffords had a public falling out with President Bush, got wined and dined by desperate Democrats and nervous Republicans in the U.S. Senate, and ultimately decided to turn independent and vote with the Democratic caucus, thus recreating Tom Daschle as a majority leader and otherwise gumming up the GOP works in Washington.
Republican partisans excoriated Jim Jeffords. At the time, many of their criticisms seemed valid to me. After all, Jeffords had just run for reelection in Vermont as a Republican, so it looked like crass opportunism and a betrayal of his home-state voters to jump ship so quickly. Secondly, Jeffords tried to justify his political switch in part by complaining of presidential snubs and arm-twisting, but something like the opposite was closer to the truth – Bush and the Republicans had nearly disgraced themselves by pandering to the liberal-leaning Jeffords on a host of issues, from government spending to the odious price-support program for Vermont dairy farmers.
But in the spirit of bipartisanship, appreciating diversity, walking a mile in another shoes, saving the whales, etc., I think it’s time to discover some Strange New Respect for the heroic Jim Jeffords (Strange New Respect is an extensive and illustrious category of political commentary that basically involves liberal political types looking for Republicans like John McCain to praise, usually because of a move to the left). Compared to North Carolina’s Double Decker, Jeffords has a legitimate claim to political sainthood.
At least the latter has always been ideologically out of place in the Republican Party. For years, Jeffords basically voted like a moderate, and sometimes even liberal, Senate Democrat. By making it official, by clarifying where he stood on the political spectrum in Washington, Jeffords arguably did both sides a favor. Plus, there is no evidence that his partisan switch required Jeffords to change any of his long-held positions, to betray his principles for personal gain.
Not so, unfortunately, with Decker. He says he remains the same conservative, pro-life, anti-tax hike, anti-gay rights, anti-pork barrel, pro-school prayer lawmaker that he was a week ago. Whatever you think of these positions – and I agree with many but not all of them – it is praiseworthy to have a set of political principles and then stick to them, resisting the temptation to sell them out for power, prestige, or pennies. Decker claims not to have sold out, but the circumstantial evidence points strongly in the other direction. No one has confirmed a deal to let Decker rise to the post of speaker pro tem, but no one is denying the possibility, either. This would boost his profile in Raleigh and his pension when he retires from the legislature. There’s other talk around town of possible jobs in the Easley administration or elsewhere.
And Decker? He has only reluctantly defended his action in public, and what he has said doesn’t add up. Will he just be joining a pre-existing caucus of conservative Democrats? Hardly. There are moderate-to-conservative Dems, of course, even in 2003, but they don’t share Decker’s ideology at all. He’s really going to be a caucus of one. Was he pushed out of the Republican Party by the heavy-handed tactics of Leo Daughtry or other prominent party leaders? Obviously not, since he could have simply voted for Black and kept his pact with the voters in the strongly Republican district that elected him just two months ago.
After all, my new political paragon, Jim Jeffords, didn’t even think it proper to become a Democrat. He became an independent. Why didn’t Decker? Apparently because he lacked Jeffords’ integrity.
Oh boy, is that one of the strangest things I’ve ever written.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.