It’s Okay to Be a Partisan Recusant

By Jason Lee Steorts

Wednesday, September 07, 2022

 

I thank Dan for his reply to the Corner post in which I said that I would “contact-trace” politicians to Trump’s auto-coup attempt. Here’s Dan’s key paragraph:

 

I won’t judge Jason [Thanks!] or Kevin on their choices of which Republicans they won’t support in a general election against a Democrat based on that politician’s own conduct. But it seems to me that adding the additional step of anathematizing any Republican “who is now campaigning” in the general election against a Democrat for problematic Republicans is going a step too far in terms of burning bridges with people who’ve made different choices. Like it or not, politics is a team sport. I judge Republicans who were fool enough to back, say, Doug Mastriano or Kari Lake in their primaries. I do not judge Republicans who refuse to vote for them over the Democrat — but I also do not judge those Republicans who think that even bad Republican candidates such as these are preferable to their opponents, given the great stakes of gubernatorial and House and Senate races on a great many issues of consequence on which Democrats are wrong about nearly everything and aim to make permanent changes to our system of government. We should have some tolerance for differences of opinion in that regard.

 

Here is what I disagree with:

 

(1) I decline the word “judge” as a description of what I’d do as a voter if it’s meant to carry a lot of emotion or suggest some kind of self-righteous scolding. That’s usually connoted when we speak of “judging someone on” this or that. I did write in the first person, about how I would vote. If you would vote otherwise, I’d disagree with you, sure. Lots of people I respect and care about probably vote quite differently from the way I would. My strongest emotional reactions in politics are not for voters but for politicians who lead voters astray. And I’d note that Dan is the one calling certain voters fools.

 

(2) “Problematic Republicans” does not fitly describe the ones I said I wouldn’t vote for, and indeed it suppresses my view. I was more specific, writing: “I don’t vote for people who try to steal elections, let alone presidents who do, and I don’t vote for anyone who enables or defends them or their enablers or defenders.” I explained that this was my line because nothing is more basic to our political order than that government is by the consent of the governed. (You might be asking whether “unalienable rights” such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are not even more basic. I would call them the pre-political criteria by which we decide whether we consent to the political order.)

 

(3) Dan’s point about the Democrats’ being wrong on nearly everything and wanting to make permanent changes to our system of government is the kind of prediction in the specific that I said I didn’t feel able to make with confidence. You hear such predictions a lot in politics — “Get with the team or the sky will fall.” I don’t know whether or when the sky will fall. To know that, I’d have to be sure not only that I was correct in my overall view of the specifics but also that current trend lines would hold. I do, however, feel a general confidence that normalizing election denialism, especially at the attempted-presidential-auto-coup level, would have bad effects sooner or later. That’s enough for me. Maybe I’m an eccentric voter, but my approach is often negative and lexical. That is, there are general principles that have a certain order of priority for me. I run through them in order, throw out any candidate who runs afoul of them, and take whoever seems best among whoever is left, if anyone is left. (Or so it would emerge, I think, if I reconstructed my rationales.) Partisan politics does often resemble a “team sport,” as Dan says, but it’s a sport I don’t want to play. I think it would be better if everyone felt less emotional about partisan identity and understood it less categorically. And if there were more partisan recusants among us, the parties might well have to compete for our votes, which could alter current trend lines. But, again, I couldn’t predict that in any specific way with much confidence.