Leaving the Republican party

I recently became aware that John Hagan, a long-time VFR reader, was no longer a member of the New Hampshire Republican party, in which he had once been very active. I asked him to write something about his experiences, and am pleased to present it here.

Why I left the Republican party

I was an activist in the New Hampshire state Republican party for about 10 years. I was involved in hosting a state-wide radio talk show, appeared on politically oriented television shows, and wrote periodic opinion pieces in several state papers. The typical chores of a mid-level party activist, though somewhat magnified due to the small size of the state.

My growing dissatisfaction with the Bush administration in 2004 put me on a collision course with my fellow party activists, and resulted in having one door after another closed on me concerning public availability of my views. A harsh denunciation of Bush by me on a state-wide radio program months before the 2004 election sealed my fate. I stated publicly on that program that if the president insisted on ignoring our borders, and kept pushing for unending third world immigration and amnesty, I would not vote for him.

Over time I had watched the collapse of Republican party leadership on a state and national level and no longer felt comfortable being associated with the party apparatus. The Bush groupies have systematically destroyed the conservative movement in the Republican party. A blind man could have seen this coming as early as his first term. Certainly it was evident in his January 2004 address to the nation when he floated his amnesty proposal again.

It was not just Bush that made me abandon the party. Republican views of so-called free-trade and the party’s cozy relationship to business interests have become so harmful in my opinion that I could no longer justify spending my time defending this party in public. In 2004 I interviewed on radio a Republican candidate for Congress in NH whom I trapped into admitting that he had no serious problem with the 15 or 20 million illegals settled in the United States as long as they did not commit any felonies. This public embarrassment of the party candidate did not go over well with the powers that be in Republican circles, and resulted in me being warned that my behavior was unprofessional.

I finally changed my voting status to Independent last year, and have limited my political activism to the occasional letter to the editor. I still support good Republican candidates, but I can no longer be associated with the national or state Republican parties which I consider hopelessly corrupt at this point in time. One thing I hope this political defeat of Bush over the immigration issue does is drive that man, his family, and their influence, from the Republican party forever.

I don’t miss the party work which was often thankless, and feel I had no choice but to step away from Republican leadership. Any ambivalence I still feel is over the direction of our nation, not the direction of the Republican party.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 30, 2007 12:37 PM | Send