It's My Party by Peter Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

came up from zero,” Marty said. “Any time you’ve got parties popping
     up like that you’ve got a very unstable and dangerous situation.” We keep hearing about how the Russians need a stable currency
     and more secure property rights. Those wouldn’t be a bad idea, Marty admitted. “But you know what the Russians could really
     use? A couple of functioning political parties.”
    Political parties keep the American system stable—and tribal loyalties keep the parties stable. Seeking, so to speak, a second
     opinion, I presented Marty Lipset’s argument to David Brady. David subscribed to it himself. “As far as I’m concerned,” David
     said, “every American should get down on his knees every night and thank God that people like the Irish are loyal to the Democratic
     Party while people like you WASPs can’t stop being Republican even if you try.”
    * * *
    In turning to the Republican past, I had of course expected to learn something about GOP history. What I hadn’t counted on
     was quite so many lessons in humility.
    First I discovered that I was ignorant. I had supposed the GOP was formed in opposition to slavery. Strictly speaking, I was
     correct. But I knew nothing of the continuity among the Republican, Whig, and Federalist parties. What would come to be known
     as the Republican Party formed not in the middle of the nineteenth century but in the earliest days of the nation’s existence.
     Membership has been handed down as it is handed down in all tribes—unconsciously. I cannot recall how I became a Republican.
     When I checked with him, neither could my older brother, Don. “I had blue eyes and brown hair and I was a Republican,” my
     brother said. “It was always just part of my identity.”
    Then I discovered that although I had always looked down on people who don’t take their politics seriously, the GOP relies
     on them. When you think about it, who
could
live up to the standards the founders implied in the Constitution? The document is so rational, deliberate, and prudent.
     George Washington may have embodied all those qualities. Few others have even come close. Yet the very institutions the founders
     failed to take into account, our political parties, manage to mediate between Americans as they actually are—impatient, busy,
     never more than half interested in politics—and the alabaster coolness of the document by which the founders expected us to
     live. The preppie on the golf course who can’t name his congressman and the jock who would rather watch a football game than
     a presidential debate are just as useful to the Republican Party as I am—maybe more so. The GOP can always count on them.
     I take politics so seriously that if somebody founded a crackpot Reagan Party, I’d actually be tempted to break with the GOP
     to join it.
    I even got a lesson in humility toward Democrats.
    A couple of comments he had dropped over the years had led me to suspect that my cousin Dave was himself a Democrat. When
     I called him, he confirmed it. “I’ve been a Democrat all my life,” he said. I asked Dave for his earliest political memory.
    “The year was 1964,” Dave replied after thinking for a moment. “Robert Kennedy was running for the Senate in New York State.
     There was a reception for Kennedy in Rochester, and my mom went. She heard him speak. Afterward she got the chance to shake
     his hand. I can remember her coming home and telling us how impressed she was.” The very year that I was trudging up the Goldwater
     side of my elementary school staircase, my cousin was listening to his mother extol the virtues of a Kennedy.
    “Dave, do you think of yourself as English or Irish?” Although Dave’s father, my own father’s brother, Uncle Ken, is of entirely
     English descent, Dave’s mother, Aunt Rita, born Rita Kelly, is of entirely Irish descent.
    “Irish,” Dave replied. “There’s no question about it. Mom was a big one for Irishness. I can remember St.