By Count Friedrich von Olsen
“Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” –The 11th Commandment
I will dedicate this sermon – I mean column – to the importance of adhering to the Eleventh Commandment…
Moving on toward seven weeks after his victory in the November 8 presidential campaign, president-elect Donald Trump is mending fences with the Republican leadership in Congress and elsewhere, individuals with whom he seemed to be at such odds during the campaign. To be accurate, many Republicans were skewering him as well. I cannot say, exactly, where it all started or who threw the first punch. The fact is it happened…
Mr. Trump looks to me to be on the road toward patching it up with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who recently gave Mr. Trump, whom I take to be a New York Giants or New York Jets fan, a Green Bay Packers Jersey. He has found a job in his administration for the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He has given top jobs in his administration to five sitting lawmakers. Much of this might well be vice president-elect Mike Pence’s doing, along with that of the incoming White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus…
I’d like to use an analogy here. I think we can see the machinery of government in Washington, D.C. as a wagon. The lawmakers are the horses. With the Republican majorities in both houses, we are now free to hook Republican lawmakers up to the wagon, with essentially little or no Democratic interference, and take the wagon in any direction we decide on. The best way to do this, I think, is to hook all of the horses up to the same side of the wagon, such that they are pulling in the same direction. It is counterproductive to have some of the horses pulling north, others south, others west and still others east…
The Republican Party is the party of conservatism. But it is not a monolith. It has a progressive wing. It has a libertarian wing. If those progressive ideas prove themselves and if the libertarian approach is practical, those principals, narrowly defined on an issue-by-issue basis, can be embraced by the party as a whole. Mr. Trump is close to some hard-line conservatives, including his chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and senior political aide David Bossie, Both got caught up in the vitriol I referenced earlier and both made some pretty powerful and acerbic statements over the years about the GOP establishment. This has left lingering hard feelings on both sides of the conservative/progressive divide in the “big tent” of the Republican Party. And this could make sledding difficult for President Trump in pushing through his legislative agenda…
My point in all of this is not to begrudge those of ultra-conservative bent or those in the middle of the road or those who are progressively oriented their views. Indeed, I welcome them and if in stating those views they can, using logic and deduction and respectful assertion convince me or any other Republicans to alter my view or their views, and change the direction of our party, I encourage that. But those views should be calmly expressed, without rancor and without vindictiveness. In eschewing vituperation, we preserve the collegiality of the party, and once all sides have made a case and a decision is rendered, we can all hitch the horses to the same side of the wagon and pull it in the agreed-upon direction…
So, I will conclude by saying that God knew what he was doing when he etched those tablets high on Mt. Sinai, and the wisdom contained in the 11th rule – “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican” – is clearly evident…