The nation and state need a better GOP

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln came to New York to address fellow Republicans and ask what type of party the young organization wanted to be.

The nation was then divided over slavery, which soon would lead to a civil war. The little-known presidential candidate from Illinois gave a calm, carefully reasoned speech based on the ideals of the Constitution. It appealed to the party’s better angels, trying to prevent the spread of slavery to newly emerging Western states by Southern Democrats.

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it,” said Lincoln. His inspiring oratory that day at Manhattan’s Cooper Union drew praise from New York’s newspapers and helped seal Lincoln’s victorious campaign for the White House.

Today — four score and 83 years later — the Republican Party faces its own divide in a search for a principled leader for our uncivil times. Is the party’s heart and soul still to be found with suburban moderates, who brought about electoral success in the past? 

Or have the Grand Old Party’s traditional roots been yanked away permanently by “disrupters” who reject its business and conservative elites and trade in grievances and violent threats, and seem alienated from the very idea of a democratic republic?

Despite notable success in congressional races last year on Long Island, the GOP enters the 2024 presidential election season unsure of its direction and doubtful of its chances. While Democrats have their own intraparty issues about the pull of its left, this uncivil war within the GOP does not bode well for a functional democracy that relies on facts and trust in institutions to govern.

YOKED TO TRUMP

The Republican Party finds itself yoked to Donald Trump, its leading presidential contender, and even more so to the Trumpian ideas with which he salted the nation. Trump’s stage management of the criminal and civil cases against him threatens to eclipse other GOP primary candidates and their views defining the country’s future.

That would be unfortunate. The nation and the state need a healthy Republican Party for our two-party system. A GOP that can work with Democrats to find solutions for our most complex domestic problems, stand together against Russian aggression and Chinese belligerence, and reassure the rest of the world that we still agree about our core American values.

Inspiration can be found in familiar Republicans who preceded Trump. After all, this is the party that produced Long Island's own Theodore Roosevelt, a war hero who helped create our national parks. Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II general, was a catalyst for the nation’s remarkable interstate highway system. During the Depression, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia became the successful Republican alternative to the corrupt Democratic machine known as Tammany Hall. And 15-year Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, later the nation's vice president, oversaw the creation and expansion of New York's public university system, providing affordable education and better-paying jobs that served as a pathway to the middle class for so many.

FIND STRENGTH AND COURAGE

From that lineage, Republicans today might find the moral strength and political courage to speak plainly, braving the wrath of Trump and the controlling MAGA wing of the party. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s clear-eyed rebuke of his onetime pal Trump was a step in that direction. So, too, were criticisms from New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, who was the GOP standard-bearer not that long ago. Perhaps other Republican leaders, presidential contenders or not, both national and local, will help refocus the party’s attention away from the soap opera of Trump’s fate and toward vital issues.

Republicans who eschew extreme rhetoric can be rewarded at the polls if they take the hard but necessary steps to appeal to suburban moderates as 2022 demonstrated. Even in New York, where Democratic registration is high, there is an increasingly large swath of independent voters not affixed to either party, who think it’s a healthy endorsement of democracy to be ticket-splitters in the voting booth. 

While New Yorkers generally don’t agree with the national GOP’s views on abortion and gun rights, local Republicans last year tapped into public concerns about important issues like crime. The GOP also made significant inroads to the Asian American community, especially on education, and to Hispanics and immigrant entrepreneurs who liked Trump’s economic policies.

State GOP chair Ed Cox, as well as Republicans nationwide, would be wise to prepare for a post-Trump future rather than engage in questionable efforts to defend him. No matter what happens in the primaries, it is doubtful that America in the general election will embrace a party of Proud Boys, miscreants, and expressions of contempt for national security concerns. Republicans instead should take the long view of history — and channel those better angels of Lincoln — in trying to solve today’s problems.