My Friend Marvin: the Once and Former Conservative Republican
More than 20 years ago, when I was dividing my time between Harvard’s Widener Library, Williams College’s Sawyer Library and the Library of Congress doing research on what would turn out to be the first of two books on the history of the Jews of Congress, someone - now long forgotten - sent me an email asking if I was aware that Oklahoma Republican Mickey Edwards likely came from a Jewish background. And so, dropping everything, I spent a considerable amount of time looking into this conservative Republican’s family history. It turned out that indeed, Mickey Edwards (née Marvin Henry Yarnovsky) was and is a former Jewish member of Congress who was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1937, the son of Isidore, the orphaned son of Polish immigrants and Rosalie, whose family had changed their name to Miller, and was the daughter of Lithuanians. Mickey would eventually move with his family from Cleveland to the southside Capitol Hill section of Oklahoma City, where his father, (now called “Eddie Edwards”), managed a shoe store. Mickey has long said that were he to have remained in Cleveland, he likely would have turned out a liberal Democrat.
Mickey eventually earned a degree in journalism, graduated from law school and was elected to Congress, where he became a leading Republican. During his 16 years (1977-1993) in Congress, he served variously on the House Budget and Appropriations committees and was the ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He was also a member of the House Republican leadership, serving as the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, the party's fourth-ranking leadership position, He also helped found the Federalist Society and was one of the leading lights of the American Conservative Union.
Once leaving Congress, Mickey, a truly intelligent, well educated man, went into academia, where he spent more than a decade teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, then working as a Lecturer of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and as a member of the Princeton Project on National Security. He taught courses on "How to Win Elections" and "Congress and the Constitution." To this day, he is also a Vice President of the Aspen Institute, and Director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. In 2013 Mickey was appointed a National Constitution Center – Penn Law Visiting Fellow. But to me, what is most telling is that he gave up his affiliation with conservative Republicanism and eventually left the party altogether.. Why? Because he could no longer abide with the cultish nature (read: pro-Trump) of the G.O.P. In a radio interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Edwards said that he had voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 general election. He endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and left the Republican Party after the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6 of this year.
In another interview with KFOR, an NBC-affiliated station in Oklahoma City, Edwards said he could not understand how even after Republican, Trump-supporting governors and legislators confirmed it was a fair election, members of Congress continued to call it into question.
“The members of Congress knew better. They knew better. [Oklahoma Senator James] Lankford knew better. Members of the house delegation knew better,” Edwards said. “They knew the results, they had the information. They saw that it was Republican Trump supporters all across the country who were saying, ‘no, we lost.” He simply could no longer lend his name or talents to a Republican party that was devoid of values, issues or morality. “This has become a cult. It’s no longer a political party. It’s a cult. It’s the kind of a cult that when the leader of the cult does anything, no matter what it is, or how awful it is, they voted,” Edwards said. “They voted to question the election results even after people came into the Capitol, tried to kill them and killed a police officer who was trying to protect them. And they did that.”-
Now mind you, these are the words, sentiments and political actions not of what used to be referred to as a “Rockefeller Republican,” or even today’s far more conservation incarnation - a so-called “moderate” Republican - but rather, as mentioned above, a former member of Congress who was a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, national chairman of the American Conservative Union and at one time chaired the House Republican Policy Committee. In other words, this is a party which welcomes the loony likes of Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Rand Paul (KY) and Josh Hawley (MO), or Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Madison Cawthorn (NC-11), Matt Gaetz (FL-1) or Lauren Boebert (C0-3); it has no place for a legislator/thinker like Mickey.
I call Mickey every once in a while just to see how he is doing, get in a bit of mutual kvetching, and dream dreams about the future.
While we’re at it, let’s get a few things straight:
First and foremost, the Republican Party, far from being a political party in the historic sense of the term, is a full-blown cult which cares not a whit or farthing about what a majority of voting citizens support or desire, but mostly what their cult leader supports or desires.
Second, more and more, Republicans are far more easily identified by what they are against than what they are for. They are against abortion, gun safety legislation, taxation, federal spending (on anything but tax cuts) and all Democrats (from AOC and Bernie Sanders to Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin) . . . whom they want all Americans to believe are nothing more than a toxic gang of traitorous Communists bent on the utter destruction of this country
Third, that besides taking back the White House and Congress from the hands of these “Communists,” they are only concerned with the money and the votes of quickly fading white Christian majority. And if to keep said majority they must put electoral stumbling blocks in front of all Democrats - suburban housewives, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, college students and the elderly - so be it.
To my way of thinking and understanding, this is not a winning strategy; it is a blueprint for a dangerously divided America. Think about this:
Despite the fact that more than 70% of the American public supported passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, not a single Republican in either the House or Senate voted in its favor.
Despite the fact that the vast majority of Republican legislators want to see Roe v. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court, a majority of Americans (61%) continue to say that abortion should be legal in all cases (27%) or most (34%) cases. A smaller share of the public (38%) says abortion should be illegal in all (12%) or most cases (26%).
Six percent more Americans say they were in favor of their senators voting to convict former President Donald Trump during the Senate impeachment trial than in his previous trial, according to a new poll. In the poll, conducted by Gallup, 52 percent of Americans said they were in favor of convicting Trump, while 45 percent said they' were in favor of their senators voting against conviction. And yet, when the final vote was taken on February 13, 2021, only 7 Republican senators voted in favor of conviction — and they are now on the former president’s “hit list” - Republicans whom he has sworn to see destroyed due to their lack of loyalty.
Is this any prescription for future electoral success?
Unlike many partisan Democrats I speak with on an almost daily basis, I do not wish to see the GOP disappear. Any political system that relies on but a single political party to get things done is a system headed towards the land of autocracy. For myself, I greatly prefer a two-party system in which both major parties campaign on – and can fully explain and justify – what they are for and what they are against. A political system which exists only on what one party proclaims – and frequently in dishonest terms – what the other side is against, is none too healthy.
In other words, a system which cannot find a place for the likes of my friend Marvin is in deep trouble. As always, I wish him well, pray for his health and energy, and wish him many, many more years of helping bring healing to his former party . . . you know, the one created by a guy named Abe? I think I’ll dial him (Marvin, not Abe) tomorrow . . .
Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone