It's My Party
Robinson, Peter
Rising Tribe It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair With the GOP Peter Robinson Warner Books / 248 pages / $24.95 REVIEWED BY ]oseph Shattan ~ n the early years of the Reagan...
...ere ~ ou ti~e source of the informalion that Kenneth Starr thougi~t he could indi,,'t the prcsidentF' 76 September 2ooo ' The Americor/ Spectator...
...Don's response is not, "You mean you've turned against the free market...
...Perhaps Irish Catholics, Italians, Slavs, and other former immigrant groups made their political choices on the basis of tribal affiliations...
...In their defense, Bakaly's lawyers tried to emphasize two not-entirely compatible points...
...If the judge chose to believe the first, there was no problem...
...Bakaly/York (Continued from page 32) had been the source or a source of the article...
...People are born into the Republican Party in the same way that they're born into a family, a religion, or an ethnic group, and they remain faithful to the GOP not because they subscribe to its platform (who reads party platforms anyway...
...Van Natta," although Bakaly's la~Ters pointed out that the agent, who took detailed notes of his meetings with Bakaly, never saw fit to write down the "untruthful" remark...
...Political parties keep the American system stable," he contends, "and tribal loyalties keep the parties stable...
...During my six years as a White House speechwriter," he writes, "I had spent six or seven days a week researching issues and honing arguments...
...The attractiveness of these, and similar, ideas is what led intelligent Democrats like Ronald Reagan and Jeane Kirkpatrick (and, for that matter, even me) to "convert" to Republicanism...
...Prosecutors called Bucklin, Sol Wisenberg, and three PBI agents to testify...
...Jeane," her Dad solemnly informed her, "I realize that one day you'll grow up and bring a man home...
...But us WASPs?...We became Republicans because that's what thinking people do...
...For most Democratic tribemembers, "conversion" is a protracted process taking place over several generations- a gradual response to economic, demographic, and God-knows what other social forces that relentlessly chip away at inherited tribal loyalties...
...There was speculation about whether he might take action while the president was still in office or wait until his term ended...
...This suggests that even if the Republican Party came out four-square against Proposition 187, it wouldn't win very many Hispanic converts--not at this early stage in the evolution of the Hispanic-American political identit T. About z,5oo years ago, an Athenian philosopher named Socrates famously observed that the first rule of philosophy was, "Know thyself...
...And if he's a Jew, I won't mind either...
...The irony was certainly not lost on Mrs...
...It's My Party is a beguiling introduction to the endlessly fascinating complexities of political identib;--the kind of RepubIican primer that only an engaged observer like Peter Robinson could have produced...
...Now, I want you to know that if he's a Catholic, that's okay with me...
...But if she chose to believe that the declaration contained false statements, then the second argument would shift the blame to Bucklin...
...Is Republican tribalism--and political tribalism in general--a good thing...
...Just look at the news from the time, they said...
...There was, in short, plen~, of public disCLtSSiOI1 of the "four options" that were such a large part of the Times sto U. "~I hose items were public," defense lawyer Michele Roberts argued...
...l h e defense called just one witness, Bakalv himself, who stressed over and over again that his declaration was true...
...But under no circumstances are you ever to marry a Republican...
...He was relying only on his memory...
...A belief in individual responsibility...
...bearing on the strength of their political affiliations...
...But as Robinson points out, nearly all previous immigrant groups have initially identified with the Democratic Party, which they perceived as the party of the little man...
...An eagerness to bring market forces to bear on social problems, introducing voucher programs, for example, to improve our schools, or replacing welfare with workfare...
...The desire to see American military might remain unassailable, even in the post-Cold War world...
...No,' Bakah answcrcd...
...After talking it over with the distinguished sociologist, Seymour Martin Lipset, Robinson decides that, in small doses at least, tribalism is desirable...
...Robinson admits that, initially, his discovery of the "tribal character of the GOP" left him unsettled...
...And besides, Bakaty's lawyers argued, why was the Justice Department arguing that the things Bakaly told Van Natta were "non-public...
...As a former Reagan speechwriter, Robinson admits to what the French call a deformation professionelle...
...l'hev ~ere the subject of intensive discussion in the inedia...
...Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, I was struck by the fact that until quite recently both Kirkpatrick and most members of her staff (myself included) had been Democrats...
...But such cerebral converts are the exception, not the norm...
...but "to honor the ways of their own tribe...
...Robcrts askcd Bakah...
...Bucklin and the agents described their hours of questioning Bakaly, accusing him of changing his story over the course of the investigation...
...Iir January 1999, there was lots of public speculation about whether Starr might ultimately indict Bill Clinton...
...Bakaly would be exonerated...
...Rising Tribe It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair With the GOP Peter Robinson Warner Books / 248 pages / $24.95 REVIEWED BY ]oseph Shattan ~ n the early years of the Reagan administration, when I was a speechwriter for U.N...
...Ideas in politics are certainly important, but contrary to many political intellectuals on both the liberal and conservative sides of the aisle, they are not all-important...
...That Robinson's passionate identification with the Republican Party derives from family loyalty, not ideas, becomes evident to him in the course of a thoughtexperiment...
...He imagines telling his brother, Don, that he has decided to become a Democrat...
...Yet the main body of the GOP...is prodife, opposes special rights for gays, and supports the institution of heterosexual marriage...
...One agent even testified that Bakaly "told us that he had not been truthful in his statements relative to his dealings with Mr...
...The conviction that any government that absorbs a full one fifth of the goods and services its citizens produce is too big and too intrusive...
...Kirkpatrick, who liked to recount a discussion with her staunchly Democratic father that took place when she was still an adolescent living in Oklahoma...
...Did \O1.l COllfirln or c o n l l n e l l [ OT] what Kclqneth Start was doing or thinkiiG...
...Only as their The American Spectator _9 September 2000 75 income levels rise do immigrants begin to feel sufficiently self-confident to vote Republican...
...Yet he eventually comes to recognize that he was born a Republican just as surely as an Irish-Catholoc friend of his was born a Democrat...
...I was reminded of this story while reading It's My Party, Peter Robinson's entertaining and insightful excursus into the ironies and paradoxes of Republican politics...
...Or as Robinson's friend, Stanford political scientist David Brady, tells him, "Every American should get down on his knees every night and thank God that people like the Irish are loyal to the Democratic Party while people like you WASPs can't stop being Republican even if you try...
...But if Robinson reluctantly comes to concede that tribal loyalties--both Republican and Democratic--have a positive role to play in the wider scheme of things, his belief in the compelling power of Republican principles remains intact: Nearly every person with whom I spoke was able to articulate his reasons for being a Republican...
...Instead, Don angrily tells him, "How could you turn your back on the family...
...Still, the belief that Republicans can come up with a winning political formula to convert wavering Democrats and bring about a massive political realignment dies hard...
...Now Peter Robinson has given us the first rule of political punditry: "Know thy tribe...
...It is true that on the social issues, Republicans are divided...
...But what Robnson discovers in the course of his encounters with a wide range of Republican stalwarts is that, for the most part, abstract ideas have little JOSEPH SHATTAN is the author of Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War (Heritage Foundation...
...I had spent so much time writing speeches that I almost believed people were Republicans because Ronald Reagan and I had personally persuaded them to join the GOP...
...For example, during the controversy over Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative in California that would have denied all but emergency services to illegal immigrants, some prominent Republicans argued that COP support for this measure would hopelessly alienate the otherwise naturally-Republican Hispanic vote...
...The first was that the Bakaly Dectaration was true, and the second was that it was written by' Bucklin, not Bakaly himself...
Vol. 33 • September 2000 • No. 7
