By Dwayne Yancey

U.S. Rep. Bob Good recently appeared in Lynchburg with Peter Alexander, who is challenging Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi for the Republican nomination for the city council in Ward IV.

Good used the occasion to talk about his work in Congress and the general state of politics, as he sees it. “I do spend most of my time sadly and unfortunately fighting Republicans,” said Good, who chairs the conservative Freedom Caucus and was one of the Republicans who helped bring down former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “The battle,” he said, “is between the pretend Republicans and the real Republicans.”

This has always struck me as an odd formulation: Is there not room for more than one type of Republican? If not, who gets to decide who are the real ones and which ones are the pretend ones? Ronald Reagan was once the epitome of Republicans — he was also an anti-Soviet interventionist in his foreign policy and a champion of accepting refugees in his domestic policy. Today, much of the Republican Party has turned isolationist and questions whether it’s worth supporting Ukraine against a Russian invasion. Which is the “real” Republican Party? Dwight Eisenhower and Robert Taft argued over that nearly 70 years ago.

To be fair, such intraparty disputes to define the direction of a party aren’t unique to Republicans; Democrats have had their share of those, too. Those always amaze me as well, because the goal in politics is usually to expand your base — but some politicians only believe in “the big tent” if their faction is the one in charge.

That part of Good’s talk wasn’t the part that got my attention, though. It was when he talked about Democrats: “The other side is pure evil. They are communists, Marxists, leftists. They hate the Founders, they hate the Constitution. They hate the principles on which we were established. They don’t believe in American exceptionalism or American sovereignty. There’s nothing to preserve or protect to pass onto the next generation. They want it destroyed and transformed into this Marxist utopia, godless utopia. Socialism is not enough to say — it’s a communist-type mentality. So we know who they are.”

I was still trying to wrap my head around the starkness of that political viewpoint when I received an email from a reader in Roanoke who proceeded to inform me that most Republicans today “are fascists.” And, apparently, all Donald Trump supporters are. “MAGA is fascist,” the reader wrote.

I understand that we live in a polarized society, but are we really so polarized that we have out-and-out “communists, Marxists, leftists” on one side and actual “fascists” on the other?

There are, undoubtedly, some of each in our land. We certainly saw some of the latter march through the streets of Charlottesville seven summers ago. 

But are all Democrats really Marxists and are the majority of Republicans really fascists? Is the other side, whatever it is, really “pure evil”?

I’ll confess I have a hard time understanding people who see the world in such stark terms. That worldview is also out of sync with the political world that I know. I was recently in Richmond, where I spent some time around the General Assembly. We have a closely divided legislature right now, 51-49 in the House, 21-19 in the Senate, with Democrats holding a narrow majority in each. Meanwhile, we have a Republican governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. If these were really Marxists and fascists, I would not expect them to get along as well as they do.

To be sure, they certainly don’t get along on everything. Democrats and Republicans very passionately disagree with each other on some pretty fundamental things: when life begins and when and whether a pregnancy can be terminated, who has the right to carry a firearm and under what circumstances. You know that list as well as I do. The legislative fights on those issues are always the ones that get attention because there are such passionate disagreements, and there is a lot at stake — just what that is depends on your political point of view.

What the public doesn’t get to see as much is how well these legislators from opposing parties get along once you move past those high-profile issues.

We have one big example of that going on right now: The signature proposal from our Republican governor, a sports arena in Alexandria, is being carried in the legislature by two Democrats. Now, maybe you can excuse that as the politics of convenience: Those two Democrats are both from Northern Virginia and if you believe the arena will be a benefit, then it will certainly benefit Northern Virginia.

However, you can find lots of other examples. One afternoon, I stood in the lobby of the General Assembly Building talking to a Republican legislator. A parade of Democrats passed by on the way to one meeting or another. The Republican legislator made a point of speaking to each one in some warm, personal way — asking one senator whether he’d gotten enough to eat, congratulating a delegate for getting her bill through committee.

These sure didn’t seem like Marxists and fascists to me, and they sure didn’t seem to regard the other side as “pure evil.” They seemed just ordinary human beings who agree on some things, disagree on other things, and were trying to all work together on the things where they do agree.

I’ve seen committee meetings where the Democratic chair sought the expertise of a Republican legislator who had some special knowledge of the bill in question. I’ve seen committee meetings where the Democratic chair cast his vote “yes” on a particular bill but then cast a “no” vote for an absent Republican legislator who had left him his proxy while he presented a bill in a different committee. I’ve seen scenes like this one where Democrats and Republicans — in this case, two Republicans and one Democrat — genuinely enjoy each other’s company, despite their political disagreements:

I’m not suggesting that everyone in Richmond is singing kumbaya because they’re not.

We saw Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, wield his power in a particularly rough way when he abruptly removed Del. Barry Knight, R-Virginia Beach, from the House Appropriations Committee that Knight had chaired when his party was in the majority.

Of course, years ago, when Republicans controlled the House, then-Speaker Vance Wilkins, R-Amherst County, kicked some top Democrats off important committees, too.

All that, however, falls under the heading of “politics as usual.” Those actions may be clever, or they may be unwise and undeserved, but none of them are different from what Federalists and Anti-Federalists did to each other centuries ago. My point: At any given point, about half the legislature may be wrong-headed (you can decide for yourself which half that is), but I don’t see it overrun by Marxists or fascists.

There’s a tendency by some, on both left and right, to see politics in all-or-nothing terms. The best practitioners of politics, though, understand the fine art of making friends on the other side. I recently wrote about the passing of Roanoke Circuit Court Judge Onzlee Ware, who before he was on the bench was a Democratic legislator. Ware always told new legislators that they needed some allies across the aisle. State Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, has certainly practiced that. Early on, he befriended Scott — this was before Scott was speaker — and they now have forged an unlikely friendship that Cardinal’s Susan Cameron wrote about in December when Scott visited Hackworth’s home in Tazewell.

The Washington Post recently profiled Scott, pointing out two things of interest: That Gov. Glenn Youngkin is a regular attendee at Scott’s weekly Bible study. And that when Democrats won control of the House, Scott made a point of retaining House Clerk Paul Nardo — a Republican.

None of that would be happening if one side was full of “communists, Marxists and leftists” and the other side was full of fascists. – Cardinal News