Congressman Rodney Alexander Switches to GOP

Due to odd historical circumstances, the Democratic Party has had, for 140 years of so, a rather conservative accent in the southeast of the US. This is largely a reflection of the inherent conservative political culture of the region. Be that as it may, since the Civil Rights Era and McGovern revolution cum debacle, the southern Democrats have been out of step with the party of Mondale, Dukakis and Gore. Democratic Congressman Rodney Alexander of Louisiana felt the same way about the party of John Kerry and is now a member of Mr. Bush's Republican Party. He gets credit for being an honest man.

The switching of party loyalties isn't a matter of apostasy or treason, but to hear American politicians carry on (and their more rabid backers even more so), one would think it was a combination of both. People change as do political priorities. A politician who doesn't change is destined to be a relic. Consider the changes in the Roosevelt family and in America between Theodore and Franklin's administrations. Teddy was the trust-buster who wanted to rein in the power of the corporation (an idea he inherited from another Republican, Abraham Lincoln). A world war and depression later, and the Democrats were the party of regulating business.

Nor is switching parties always a sign that a politician's career is finished. Winston Churchill resigned from the Liberal Whip only to serve as Conservative Prime Minister during Britain's greatest crisis.

What the move of Congressman Alexander, and perhaps of Zell Miller someday soon, means is that the tradition of being a Democrat in the south is dying out in favor of being a conservative member of Congress, sitting with the more conservative party in the legislature. Chairmanships and the like will be decided more by one's ideology than by that of one's grandfather.

Nor is this a one way street. There are Republicans in the New England States, and some in New York City, who are decidedly to the left of the Democrats in the south. The realignment is long over due, and if he accomplishes no more than highlighting that, Mr. Alexander has served his country in switching sides.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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