What’s in a Name?
January 14, 2012
BY DICK METHIA
William Shakespeare famously wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But Billy the Bard never ran for president. In this year’s Republican presidential race, to have the word “moderate” stuck to you is worse than having an angry skunk in your garage. Like a thunderbolt from Olympus, Newt Gingrich hurled his most damning accusation at front runner Mitt Romney–“timid Massachusetts moderate.”
Newt, who holds a doctorate in history, conveniently forgot a time when “Massachusetts Republican moderate” was an accolade, not a curse. Newt was a budding historian when in 1966 the Bay State elected Ed Brooke, America’s first Black senator since Reconstruction–a GOP moderate. Newt was wearing bellbottoms and platform shoes (a painful mental image) when Massachusetts moderate Republican Eliot Richardson, then Richard Nixon’s attorney general, resigned rather than support Tricky Dicky during Watergate.
The most recent example of a Republican moderate is—Mitt Romney, who won the governorship of one of the most reliably Democratic states in the Union. Mitt ran for Bay State governor as a moderate. How else could he have won in the Kennedy duchy? The last conservative governor to win election in the Bay State was John Winthrop in 1637. His platform included banning dancing and hunting witches.
If “moderate” is an insult, what hope is there for more civility in Washington? What’s wrong with moderation? Aristotle taught “metron ariston,” moderation is best. But like the Bard of Avon, Aristotle never had to face the voters of South Carolina in the Republican primary. You might remember (not personally, of course) that in 1860 the Palmetto State’s version of moderate politics was to secede from the Union.
I once had the opportunity to hear Prof. Gingrich in person. He was lecturing, not running for office. He was brilliant, entertaining—and moderate in his views. My family lives in Massachusetts. They watched in 2006 as an astute Gov. Romney patched together a coalition to pass the Nation’s most innovative (conservatives call it “draconian”) health care law.
What happens to today’s Republicans when they set out on the campaign trail? The same thing that happens to Democrats. Along with their antacids, sleeping pills and slogans, they play to their bases, the hard righties and lefties whose votes get them nominated. Then they run to the middle to placate the moderates and independents whose votes determine final elections. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?
Funny thing is that the same far right and far left folks who scream at partisan rallies turn out to be the everyday, accommodating citizens in hundreds of cities and towns across America who make the country work. How many of us work in liberal or conservative offices? Do we live in conservative or liberal neighborhoods? Somehow the adrenaline of the electoral process poisons our bloodstreams and turns us all into screaming fans at a political rockfest. If super partisanship becomes the order of the day, we’ll have to declare our party affiliation at the pump.
Name calling is a traditional, if deplorable, part of U.S. political campaigns. But if Prof. Gingrich cares about his lasting reputation, he would be wise to remember that newts spend most of their lives in a swamp.
Dick Methia is a Yankee (New England) humorist