Are you a Republican who doesn’t agree that this is a particularly appropriate time for us to engage in a foreign war? Or maybe you’re a Democrat who believes that federal spending needs to be reined in, perhaps even trimming programs like Medicare?
Based on the current state of our two-party system, you might be considered a RINO or a DINO, a traitor to your party, or a person who does not deserve a voice. Political parties have become especially strident in recent years, where membership may sign you up for a whole list of positions you’re expected to feel strongly about and support.
Two hundred fifty years ago, our Founding Fathers debated the wisdom of including political parties in the Constitution they were writing. Called “factions,” the framers were concerned that if these groups were formalized in the Constitution, they would divide the republic and put private interest above the public good. George Washington in particular worried that parties were a threat to national unity. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, believed that parties would help provide the necessary opposition in order to balance the power of the government.
It was hoped that the structure of the Constitution would limit the negative effects of parties, while allowing the natural development of groups organized around similar points of view, without formally including parties in the document. But the first two parties began emerging and vying for power almost as soon as the ink was dry.
How’s that working for us lately? Perhaps, if we had more than two parties, each with its own platform of preferred policies and priorities, we might have a system like many European democracies where the government functions intentionally as a coalition, with a varied group of representatives who expect to negotiate and cooperate as a way of running the country’s business. Governments can collapse and reorganize with new coalitions without waiting for a planned election every two or four years.
But this is America, and, as is so often the case, we have developed our own way of doing things. Any party beyond the Big Two is treated as a joke, or a spoiler that siphons votes away from one or the other party in a futile attempt to improve what each is offering. As a result, the needs of the voters are shoehorned into R or D options that rarely fit the complexity of life in our modern world.
Let’s start with a list of some major areas of policy decisions that typically determine what’s on voters’ minds when choosing a representative, especially a President: economic, environmental, social, and foreign. I invite you to pick any one of these domains and think of how many complex layers each one contains, how many different types of decisions they include, and how unlikely it is that you will wholeheartedly agree with every interpretation and every one of the decisions a party supports.
Back to our Republican who’s not comfortable with this President starting this war without even notifying, much less obtaining approval from, the Congress that is designated in the Constitution as having the exclusive authority to declare war. He has basically three choices: he can silence his doubts and support the President because he is a Republican; he can decide to support the Democrats, who are totally opposed to the President’s actions and seek to stop any further acts of war; or he can struggle with his mixed emotions and seek out as much information as he can to educate himself further on the details of the situation, both pro and con.
It is not a betrayal of your conservative political preferences, or of the party with whom you mostly agree, for you to think seriously about what you learn as you seek more information about a policy or decision. It’s actually called “due diligence,” and it means that you are putting effort into forming your opinion rather than swallowing someone else’s opinion without even chewing. Whom you vote for can change as a result.
John Cornyn, our Republican Senator who used to be known for his ability to find bipartisan solutions to shared problems, is a good example of someone who has succumbed to the lure of being swallowed whole: his campaign mailings blare how he votes with Trump and MAGA 99% of the time, as if that’s all voters need to know.
Meanwhile, his opponent Ken Paxton wants to tell voters how Cornyn sponsored legislation after the Uvalde school shooting in 2022 that created funding for some new initiatives regarding gun ownership, even though they were modest and did not include any greater restrictions for gun owners. Paxton wants voters to know this because it is now considered a mortal sin to even speak of gun laws, much less vote for them. So Cornyn is not a “real” Republican. (Don’t get me started on what Ken Paxton is.)
As a result of this complexity, our Republican voter may choose to support the “less” Republican candidate in hopes that more of the voter’s beliefs will find support. Of course, the longer-term solution would be that bipartisanship would become desirable in a candidate instead of the anathema it seems to be now.
Once you educate yourself even a bit more deeply about the policy issues that should concern all Americans, while you may feel somewhat unmoored when you stop hanging on to the buoy of a party line, you will soon experience the steadiness and empowerment of a new connection: a belief in your own thoughts and feelings, your own choices, your own willingness to be proven wrong and to grow in your awareness and understanding of life.
You will have become an Independent.
Susan Hull is a retired clinical psychologist, a horse trainer, and an Independent voter. She invites you to enjoy the freedom of being able to research and decide who deserves your vote instead of swallowing the Party hook, line and sinker.
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