The Unofficial Party

The major two-party system in American politics has existed since our nation’s infancy. 

While President John Adams warned against the dueling party system as “the greatest political evil under our Constitution”, it is a pillar of our republic. Today, Democrats and Republicans account for the majority of modern-day political party affiliations.

The two parties don’t need to be enemies, rather complementary civic partners. Though the opposing camps differ on policy decisions, both support the individual citizens of our country with their unique visions. However, Republicans and Democrats have dealt with a hidden opponent – an unofficial group that parasitically attached to both parties over the past 100 years, yet never represented the ideals of either host.

Who is this shadowy “unofficial party” slipping between political tents?

Exposing State’s Rights

The unofficial group I’m talking about has a single goal: promoting the interests of the majority regardless of individual constitutional rights. With this mentality, popular opinion is sacred, minority rights are expendable, and the State is king.

These popular majority supporters point to the 10th Amendment as their justification to supersede others’ rights. Though the 10^th Amendment guarantees the states powers that are not reserved for the Federal government, it does not invalidate individual rights.

Following the American Civil War, nearly every constitutional amendment beginning at Reconstruction is systematically ignored by Southern voters in what appears to be a desperate attempt to pretend the Confederates never lost. (Reconstruction Amendments 13, 14, and 15 respectively abolished slavery, ensured equal protections of citizens of each state in the union, and prohibited suffrage restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.) Unsurprisingly, the Southern states continued to infringe on African-American equal protections and voting rights well into the 20^th century. And this illegal restriction of rights endured in the South for over 150 years behind the passionate defense of a single group: The state’s rights conservatives.

Don’t confuse limited government conservatism and state’s rights conservatives. The two are very different. Limited government conservatives focus on reducing the size and scope of government to its most efficient scale. State’s rights conservatives rely on the power of the state to push forward the will of the majority. Really, state’s rights advocates are just big-government conservatives who want to centralize unquestioned majority power at the state.

State’s rights conservatives seem to believe the 10^th Amendment absolves states from their obligation to respect each citizen’s constitutional rights. Their ideas don’t belong in either party -- and they know it. It’s why these conservatives are transients, seeking a home wherever they will be accepted (deriding the establishment party along the way). State’s rights conservatives give good conservatives a bad name.

The Great Conservative Migration

Today, Republicans are regarded as the conservative party, but it wasn’t always this way. The Republican National Committee (RNC) began as a progressive anti-slavery movement prior to the American Civil War. Being Republican meant supporting civil rights, economic freedom, and social justice. Republicans favored racial equality while the Democratic Party remained conflicted between its conservative wing in the former Confederate South and the liberals residing in Northeast.

The Klu Klux Klan (KKK) and Jim Crow segregationists of the early 20^th century are often associated with Southern Democrats. In fact, Southern conservative Democrats, in an effort to protect their ability to keep segregation legal and counter the liberal Democratic support of the civil rights movement, briefly split during the 1948 presidential campaign, forming the Democratic State’s Rights Party (AKA “Dixiecrat” Party). “State’s rights” was their motto, yet these were not Democratic ideals.

As the civil rights movement progressed into the 1960s, liberal Democrats pressed for anti-discrimination legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which offered protections based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. State’s rights conservatives revolted. Opportunistic Republicans, a desperate minority party in 1964, sought to expand their tent. They implemented a scheme to pull Southern white conservatives to the GOP, an action dubbed the “Southern Strategy”. It was successful and the state’s rights movement had a new home in the GOP.

Rise of the Un-Republicans

50 years ago, RNC leadership turned on the Republican values of civil rights and racial equality in order to build a winning political coalition. In a way, they sold their soul to win national elections. Party leadership began to embrace more conservative state’s rights principles and the un-Republican movement began to grow within the RNC. The Southern Strategy was executed flawlessly, helping swing Presidents Nixon (1968) and Reagan (1980) into office with the newfound support of the conservative south. The change of white southern conservative support brought Republican victories, yet may have changed the RNC’s political philosophy forever.

In the most recent civil rights discussion of same-sex marriage, a strange parallel has surfaced with how state’s rights conservatives responded to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. The courts ruled that segregation based on race in public schools violated the 14^th Amendment rights of students facing discrimination. State’s rights conservatives howled that judicial activists were supplanting their state sovereignty with federal mandates. Conservative politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) now claim that the Federal courts are full of judicial activists disregarding the “will of the people” who voted to oppose marriage equality. Potential conservative presidential contender, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), called the marriage rulings “disappointing”, claiming states should be able to decide on these matters.

In a typical state’s rights maneuver, these conservatives have ignored the 14^th Amendment equal protections of gay and lesbian couples in favor of their popular majority. Although conservatives typically support religious freedom, they deny it to American Presbyterians who recognize same-sex marriage. Would conservatives allow their religious freedoms to be subject to popular vote? -- No chance!

The RNC seems to agree with Sen. Cruz and Gov. Bush, and now includes the un-Republican state’s rights sentiment in their official national platform, though the courts are ruling against the state bans on marriage equality at rapid pace (37 states and counting). Apparently, many conservatives don’t care about constitutional amendments added after the Confederate South fell. Are the RNC leadership and politicians with similar positions on state’s rights (including Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Jeb Bush, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Rick Santorum, etc...) just Dixiecrats in Republicans’ clothes?

The real RINOs

The RNC now touts their values as “conservative” rather than Republican. Candidates don’t run as Republicans, they run from the label. This was the case with Wisconsin 6^th District Congressman Glenn Grothman, who in the 2014 election proudly displayed political advertisements claiming he is fighting for “conservative values”. Grothman subsequently beat his moderate challenger. Republicanism, in large part, was eschewed in favor of conservatism. Conservatives want to elect “true” conservatives into office, not Republicans. While Republicans cheer a massive blow to Democrats by claiming majorities in both houses of Congress, this wasn’t their victory; it was the conservatives’ -- the usurpers of the Republican Party.

Today, conservatives claim to be the base of the RNC. Yet how can the framework of Republican values such as individual liberty and limited government be built on a political base bent on its destruction? State’s rights conservatives favor popular majority enforced by a powerful State, while Republicans protect the minority from majority will. These positions are polar opposites.

Though state’s rights conservatives have been a part of the Republican Party for decades, their values never really belonged. Conservatives were frustrated with liberals when they were misfits in the Democratic Party. Now conservatives are frustrated with moderate Republicans who better represent the GOP’s founding mission. The irony isn’t lost when the most un-Republican conservative groups refer to moderate Republicans as RINOs (“Republicans-in-name-only”).

Crashing the Party

The Republican Party correctly seeks to be more inclusive. Unfortunately, the RNC has only been successful at including groups whose mission is to extinguish Republican ideals. At this point, RNC leadership has strayed so far from the original party line, they have forgotten what being a Republican is all about: Individual civil rights that are NEVER subject to popular vote. Have Republicans allowed themselves to be kicked out of their own tent?

If only the RNC had not implemented the Southern Strategy, Republicans might still be the party of civil rights. If state’s rights conservatives had not infected the party founded to stop them, Republicans would be fighting for minority rights, not majority comfort and supremacy.

Real Republicans recognize the party’s cancer. The growing state’s rights conservative movement has mutated the Republican message from empowering individuals to overpowering them. Until Republican voters realize their party has been unofficially taken over by the mentality the GOP was founded to thwart, Republicanism is lost.


(Also published at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Purple Wisconsin)