Opinion: Should Republicans vote Democratic?

The problems with both sides of this growing debate. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Thursday, February 8, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [David Leonhardt] David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist At what point should members of one political party start voting for the other one to force their party to change? Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes have sparked a debate about that question with [a piece in The Atlantic](. “We have both spent our professional careers strenuously avoiding partisanship in our writing and thinking,” Rauch and Wittes write. Yet they argue that voting against the Republican Party is now a moral necessity, given its enabling of President Trump’s subversion of the law and his attacks on democracy itself. “If conservatives want to save the GOP from itself,” the subhead of the article reads, “they need to vote mindlessly and mechanically against its nominees.” My colleague Ross Douthat uses his latest column [to offer a rejoinder](. Forget for a moment about the tweets and focus on the policy, he writes: On policy — waterboarding, Nafta, NATO, Iran, libel laws and so on — the Republican Party is indeed constraining Trump. “And so long as he remains weak and trammeled and conventional in policy, the case that conservatives have a moral obligation to vote like liberals won’t convince,” Douthat concludes. I recommend reading both pieces. I also take issue with both. The radicalism of the Republican Party, [on both policy and process]( is arguably the country’s biggest political problem. Consider: Even apart from Trump, the party rejects overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change — evidence that’s accepted by virtually every other conservative party in the world. As a result, serious attempts to combat climate change are hamstrung, and all of our children and grandchildren are likely [to suffer for it](. Or consider that the Republican Party has repeatedly tried [to restrict voting rights]( often for partisan advantage. Or consider that it refused to fill a Supreme Court seat because the other party held the presidency, [risking future paralysis]( in court appointments. Or consider that much of its domestic policy depends on magical thinking. That’s why its health care bills last year were so bad and why the party [runs up the deficit]( each time it takes power. The Democrats have their own problems, it’s true. They’re rarely blameless in partisan debates. But their problems are of a different magnitude. Does any Democratic sin approach climate denial? No. Rauch and Wittes argue that these reasons are nonetheless insufficient for conservatives to abandon the party. Only the Trumpian attack on democratic norms is. I think they’re wrong about that — and therefore end up with an unnecessarily narrow argument, against which Douthat scores some points. Trump is an outgrowth of today’s radical, norm-shattering Republican Party. In some ways, he took its ideas to their logical extreme without hiding them behind the more polished behavior of, say, Paul Ryan. There is little reason to believe that would-be Republican reformers — [like my friend Ross Douthat]( — are going to succeed in stopping the craziness until the party loses power. Winning parties don’t tend to reform themselves. Which makes the ultimate Wittes-Rauch conclusion persuasive: “The most-important tasks in U.S. politics right now are to change the Republicans’ trajectory and to deprive them of power in the meantime.” I recognize that voting against Republicans is as easy for a progressive to suggest as it is hard for a conservative to execute. But here’s my case to conservatives who do believe in facts and democratic norms (and would rather that [Miami stay above water]( You are politically homeless right now. Your party has become a destructive force. Its victories — which you may understandably celebrate, like a lower corporate tax rate — don’t make up for the damage the party is doing. And the other party obviously remains too left-wing for you. Your best hope is a sane conservative party. And the only route to a sane conservative party is a string of losses for the current Republican Party. Conservatives aren’t the only ones who would benefit from a better Republican Party, either. Democrats, and the country, would, too. There’s a very long list of issues on which conservative ideas have something important to say: about whether government regulations are the best way to fight climate change; about [the benefits of competition and accountability]( for public schools; about the breakdown [in family structure]( about the tensions between [abortion and eugenics]( about avoiding the economic sclerosis of Europe; and on and on. Unfortunately, it’s a fantasy to believe that today’s Republican Party is playing this constructive role. It’s doing significantly more damage than good, and there is little prospect that will change until Republican radicalism brings a political price. Speaking of climate change: Scott Pruitt, Trump’s E.P.A. administrator, claimed this week that even if the climate were changing, it’s good news. “Humans have most flourished during times of … warming,” Pruitt said. In [The New Republic, Emily Atkin]( writes that Pruitt “appears willing to accept any conclusion about climate change as long as it’s not the one shared by most climate scientists around the world.” Porter, out. Rob Porter, a top aide to President Trump, resigned yesterday after evidence became public suggesting that he assaulted his former wives. It’s worth emphasizing that the White House had long been aware of the accusations but nonetheless kept him in a top job. “Trump staff and surrogates accused of domestic violence or assault against women: Rob Porter, Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Andrew Puzder,” [tweeted Shannon Watts, a political activist](. “Also, Donald Trump.” In her column, [Gail Collins]( focuses on the role of John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, in the Porter mess. The full Opinion report from The Times follows. Op-Ed Columnist [Apocalypse Not]( By BRET STEPHENS The “peak oil” scare comes to naught again, like other scares. 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