272: Big Tent

Ira Glass

A couple weeks ago, I heard this show on the radio where they were trying to explain why most people in most elections prefer Republicans these days. And there was a writer named Thomas Frank on the show, going around with this book that he just published about politics in Kansas. He is interested in why Kansans would keep voting for Republicans at every level, even though Republican economic policies and social policies weren't doing much to help them. And, he says, they actually made their lives tougher in a lot of ways. Hurt farmers. Hurt the Kansas economy. The poorest county in the country went for President Bush with an 80% majority in the last election.

Frank's argument-- you may have heard him talk about this on that book tour-- is that Republicans were getting people to vote against their own economic self-interest by appealing to their values on cultural issues, on abortion, on God. Though as Frank and the other guest on this radio show, On Point, said-- the other guest was Atlantic Monthly senior editor, Jack Beatty-- the Democrats haven't been very good for most Kansans' economic interests either.

Ira Glass

Soon they got to callers. The first was this Republican voter who said that of course he wasn't just voting his pocketbook. That would be crude.

Ira Glass

This caller said that he disagreed with the Republicans on a bunch of things. But he said that one nice thing about the Republican Party is that it welcomes people who disagree with them on this particular issue, or that particular issue. Whereas, he said, Democrats, if you're pro-life, it doesn't feel like there's any place for you in the party. The next caller said the same thing, that there was no room in the Democratic Party for a diversity of views.

Ira Glass

Of course, famously, in 1992, Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Robert Casey, wasn't allowed to speak at his own party's convention, because he was pro-life. Republicans control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House. They have 28 of 50 governorships. They control the House and the Senate in 21 State Houses. Seven out of nine Supreme Court Justices are Republican appointees. And they dominate the majority of federal appellate courts, as well.

They are on the march. Republicans are positioning themselves as America's majority party. And what that means is-- though Democrats may find this surprising, given the fact that blacks, and Jews, and Hispanics still vote mostly for Democrats-- lots of people find the Republican Party to be more inclusive, more welcoming, more accepting of diverging views.

This is what Newt Gingrich was talking about, just last week, when he declared that yes, there is a party of narrow-minded bigotry in this country. It's called the Democrats. He meant that the Democrats are the ones who demand that you fall into lockstep on abortion, and affirmative action, and all sorts of other political correctness besides.

Today on our radio show, Republicans on the March. Their party is great at getting elected. And they do it very smartly, by papering over the differences come election time. On today's program, though, we leave aside the official talking points that Republicans are saying everywhere until November, and ask Republicans to speak instead about what they actually believe, and what they want for their party, and for the country. And it's way more complicated than you might think. Not just Christians on the one side of the Party fighting with moderates on the other. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our radio show, Republicans, The Party of Inclusion.

Act One of our program, Pink Elephant. In that act, a Republican on what might seem like an ill-fated mission to win the hearts and minds of his fellow Republicans at their convention. Act Two, Right and Righter. A visit to one of the many states where the Republican Party has been picking up strength. To see how and why, we spend some time with the Alabama Republican Party.

Act Three, Indecent Proposal. In that act, free market Republicans in this story, about a rich guy who knows that every person has his price. And so he goes to his Republican co-workers with an offer of money-- lots and lots of money-- if they will dare to spend just one evening with him, doing an act that most Republicans would find utterly repulsive, namely watching the Michael Moore film.

Act Four, It's My Party. One of the most civil conversations that you will ever hear between one side of the Party, that feels like it should be included, and the other, that feels that maybe it should not. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, Pink Elephant. Patrick Howell came to the Republican Convention this year on a mission that makes you wonder if he's in denial about the state of today's Republican Party, or if he knows a lot more about it than you do.

Ira Glass

The Log Cabin message is the message of gay Republicans. Log Cabin, you may already know, is the name of the gay Republicans' official national organization. And their inclusive message definitely had an uphill battle at this year's convention. Not only did the party adopt a platform calling for a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage, and decrying that homosexuality is not compatible with military service, gay Republicans couldn't even talk a single delegate into presenting their side of things for discussion at the platform committee. They were totally shut out. Nationally, just 11% of Republican voters support same-sex marriage. Hence Patrick's plan.

Ira Glass

In his experience talking to Republicans, which is considerable, this is the most effective sell, that tolerance wins elections. 1.1 million gays and lesbians voted for President Bush in the year 2000, just a fourth of the gay vote overall, but enough to make a difference for the president. In Florida, that works out to nearly 50,000 votes, the Log Cabin Republicans say.

Patrick is in his 30s, an attorney in Orlando. Until a few years ago he was married. He has a little boy from that marriage. Then he came out. He has always been a Republican, and agrees with the president on pretty much everything, he says, except gay issues. The treatment that he gets in his own party has varied quite a bit. For instance, county Republican leaders specifically reached out and invited Patrick to run for the state assembly two years ago, in a district in Orlando that's mostly Democrats and gay-friendly. The State Party gave him the maximum, $50,000, and hooked him up with another $50,000 in third party ads. But then the Republican who used to hold that seat actually endorsed Patrick's Democratic opponent in the race, rather than support a gay candidate. Patrick has gotten some nasty emails, saying, why don't you leave the party? You're not wanted. But the nastiness, he says, happens less often than you'd think. One-on-one, he finds most Republicans are glad to sit down and talk to him.

Ira Glass

In New York, the first Republican Convention event that Patrick attended was run by his own organization, the Log Cabin Republicans. In the wake of their defeats at the Platform Committee, they staged what they called the Big Tent Event, with as many high-profile mainstream politicians as they could sign up. The very liberal-minded Republican Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, kicked things off to a room with a few hundred people in it, which for gay Republicans, is a huge turnout.

Ira Glass

The mayor talked about inclusiveness being the future of the Party, and about how constitutional amendments shouldn't be used to divide people. New York governor Pataki, who is such a rising star in the party, that he was the one who introduced President Bush at the convention later in the week, who is a possible 2008 presidential contender himself, felt enough solidarity with the gay Republicans to show up at this event, but not enough solidarity to actually mention in his remarks inclusiveness, the place of gays in the party, the place of moderates in the party, gay marriage, homosexuals, or really any other Log Cabin issues at all. It was the sort of speech he could have given to any group of Republicans.

Ira Glass

The surprise stars of the day were Arlen Specter and William Weld. Senator Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said that he didn't know, and he didn't care, if supporting gay rights would help Republicans win elections. These are fundamental rights, he said.

Then came William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts, another possible presidential candidate for 2008. If you've heard President Bush rail against activist judges legalizing marriage, Governor Weld would remind you that some of those judges are Republican appointees, including the head of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, who he appointed, and who legalized gay marriage in that state. Weld talked about his gay and lesbian friends, about gay and lesbian members of his own administration in Massachusetts.

Ira Glass

And from there, the Republican Weld laid out a position on gay marriage that is far more liberal than the supposedly super liberal John Kerry's position. Kerry opposes gay marriage.

Ira Glass

Patrick was one of the people clapping enthusiastically when Weld said that, and when Arlen Specter talked about gay rights being a matter of principle.

Ira Glass

At the convention one night, at Madison Square Garden, I hovered around Patrick as he walked up to seven different groups of Republicans, wearing his Log Cabin inclusion pin. A lady from Texas in a red cowboy hat and red boots and a handsome couple from Virginia both pretty much iced Patrick when the subject of gay marriage came up, which Patrick took as opposition to gay marriage. A young African American guy was for gay marriage, as were two rich people from Miami. One of them turned out to be gay. And the other, his friend, turned out to be a big Republican donor, on the chairman's advisory board. Three other people that Patrick approached fell into kind of a gray area, against gay marriage, but in ways that gave him some kind of sliver of hope. There was this family from Utah, who seemed open to the idea of civil unions. And there was this Korean War vet.

Ira Glass

Civil unions were fine with him, though. Patrick says that ever since Republicans started talking about outlawing gay marriage, at the federal level, tons of Republicans have been supporting civil unions, to a degree that he'd never imagined five years ago. He was very hopeful about the vet.

Ira Glass

Cindy White tells Patrick that Republicans in North Carolina are mostly against gay marriage. It's the Bible Belt, she says.

Ira Glass

At the end of talking to all these Republicans, the score was two against Patrick and gay rights, two for Patrick and gay rights, and three, like this last woman, that seemed like they might come around some day. Patrick felt pretty good. His sense, in general, is that people are more flexible than you know.

Ira Glass

If you think about it, how many situations are there, where arch-conservative Christians and homosexuals sit down together and really hash things out. That's the point, Patrick says. We're inside the fortress. We're in these people's lives. We're talking to them. If anybody's going to get to these very conservative people on gay issues, it's going to be gay Republicans, not the protesters and activists who are outside the fortress.

Ira Glass

Act Two, Right and Righter. To understand the rise of the Republican Party over the last 20 years, one place you can look is Alabama, where they've made huge strides. If there is a religious and a nonreligious wing of the party, this is definitely the religious wing. Of the 48 delegates Alabama sent to the Republican Convention in New York, not one was pro-choice. Nationally, one out of three Republican Voters is pro-choice. 70% of the state identifies itself as born-again Christian, versus 40% nationally. Alex Blumberg visited with the Alabama Republican Party.

Alex Blumberg

Marty Connors is the state chairman of the Republican Party in Alabama. He says that for Alabama, he's a moderate. He supports the war in Iraq 100%. He's opposed to any and all taxes. He wants Roe v. Wade to be overturned. And he would welcome prayer back into the public schools. But this is the state residents proudly call the buckle of the Bible Belt. So Marty Connors sometimes finds himself the most liberal person in the room.

Alex Blumberg

This is Jim Zeigler, founder of a group called The League of Christian Voters, which represents the right wing of Alabama's right wing.

Alex Blumberg

Of course, in Alabama, both wings of the party are pro-life and begin their meetings with a prayer. So it can be a little hard to tell the two sides apart. The difference is mainly one of priorities. Business Republicans pray a lot, but Jim Zeigler's wing wants God to be at the very center of everything the government does.

In other words, it's the wing of Judge Roy Moore. Remember him? He was the Alabama chief justice who installed a 5,000 pound monument of the 10 Commandments in the state courthouse, and then was told to remove it by his own Republican-dominated bench. He later lost a job over it. Lots of Republicans didn't support Moore, or found him a little embarrassing. But the fact that the party didn't go to bat for him galvanized Jim Zeigler. He started The League of Christian Voters to try and get more Republicans like Judge Moore elected.

Alex Blumberg

Here's how the Christian wing is doing so far. Out of three races for state judge this summer in the Republican Primary, they won one. And they make up about a third of the delegates at the Republican National Convention, 17 out of 48. One of those 17 was Zeigler himself, who became a delegate in a very symbolic race. He beat a man named Perry Hooper, Sr., who was one of the founders of the modern GOP in Alabama, the first Republican ever elected to the State Supreme Court, and one of the most respected centrists in the entire party. After his loss, Hooper called Zeigler an embarrassment to Christianity.

Alex Blumberg

On a Thursday night in the break room of Warrior Tractor, a farm equipment retailer in Monroeville, Alabama, I got a chance to see the moderate wing of the Republican Party. This is the largest meeting ever of the Monroe County Chapter of the Republican Party. People are turning Republican in Alabama faster than the Party infrastructure can keep up with them. For over a century, the state, like all its southern neighbors, had voted exclusively Democratic. You could fit all the Republicans in the state into one room, I'm told over and over again.

As late as 1992, Democrats controlled both of Alabama's seats in the US Senate, and five of the seven in the House of Representatives. Today, just a decade later, it's reversed. Five of the seven representatives and both senators are Republican, not to mention the governor and most of the State Supreme Court. There are about 100 people here, nibbling at pot luck offerings from Tupperware containers and casserole dishes. Mostly they're small business people. And mostly they want the standard Republican wish list. Smaller government, lower taxes, stronger military. But at some level, the issues are only part of the Republican draw. Kay Ivey, the state's first Republican treasurer, and featured speaker, puts it this way.

Alex Blumberg

Later, a woman at the meeting tells me she can imagine George Bush walking right into this room, filled with these people, and fitting right in. But try as she might, she can't imagine John Kerry here. And actually, neither can I. Although Monroe County is almost 40% black, the crowd here is all white. And everyone admits the Party doesn't do too well with black people in Alabama. 19 out of every 20 black votes goes to a Democrat. And the state chairman was actually booed during a speech at Tuskegee University, when he mentioned Condoleezza Rice. Mainly this is historical. Lots of white voters in the South switched to the Republicans because of Democratic Party support for civil rights in the 60s.

Today though, when a person with openly racist views decides to run on the Republican ticket, one Republican operative told me, the Party funnels back-channel money to the Democratic opponents, to make sure he doesn't get elected. And when visiting reporters come to town, the Party leadership introduces them to Shirrell Roberts, one of the black pioneers in the Alabama Republican Party. Shirrell's parents lived through the civil rights struggles in Alabama. And he lives in Montgomery, which is where, you remember, Martin Luther King's church was located, freedom riders were beaten at the bus station, and Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.

Alex Blumberg

Shirrell's car has a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker. Driving around the neighborhood, he's been called a sellout and an Uncle Tom. He gets in political arguments with his Democrat mom all the time. Shirrell realized he was a Republican while watching the 1984 Democratic Convention with his family, when he heard Walter Mondale promise to raise taxes. Even as a kid, in a house of Mondale supporters, he hated that idea, proof that some people are just born Republican. Shirrell says that old-guard segregationists still occasionally show up in the party.

Alex Blumberg

Shirrell is pro-life, wants smaller government. He's for the war in Iraq. But most of our conversation was spent on the subject of inequality-- racial and economic inequality-- which isn't one of your usual Republican talking points.

Alex Blumberg

You have to hand it to a political party that can claim both of these guys as loyal members. Steven King is a self-described right wing Christian and the chairman of the Blount County Republican Party. On most issues, it's not that he and Shirrell believe different things, it's just that Steven King believes them more. He's more of a free marketeer, thinks government should almost not exist, and on religious issues, he's less of a compromiser.

Alex Blumberg

People in the Christian wing, like Steven King, because they're motivated by their idealism and care less about political majorities, can find themselves in a paradoxical position. They're the Party's most conservative members. But sometimes they sound like its most liberal critics.

Steven King, for example, doesn't trust the Patriot Act. He's opposed to tort reform, and don't even get him started about that secret meeting Dick Cheney held a while back with energy industry representatives. The vice president has refused to release even a list of the people who attended. And Steven King says that's the same type of thing that Republicans got mad at President Clinton about when he appointed his wife, Hillary, to head a panel on health care.

Alex Blumberg

Like many idealistic people, Steven King has a complicated relationship to politics. He's drawn to it, but he also feels let down by it. He still remembers, as a kid, begging his parents to stay up and watch the '72 Convention on TV, to see Nixon get nominated. All those people with all those deeply held convictions coming together to argue and persuade. It seemed romantic, like the first Constitutional Convention, when the country was being founded.

Alex Blumberg

This, it sometimes seems, is what you are here for, to drink free booze and dance awkwardly to cover bands. It's the week of the GOP Convention in New York. A couple of the delegates at this party have a line on some Skynyrd tickets for later. It's a private concert for the GOP conventioneers. And even though this is the largest assembly of Republicans for the next four years, and even though there's every kind of Republican present here-- including a drunk one at the bar, who confided in me late in the evening that he's voting for Kerry-- even here, Steven King can't get what he wants.

Ira Glass

That story by Alex Blumberg. Coming up, Steven King gets his wish, a real debate, the kind that rarely happens in American politics. We have him sit down with Patrick Howell, the Log Cabin Republican from the first act of our show, mano-a-mano. Who will convince whom? That's in the second half of our show, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, stories about America's majority party. And yes, they are just barely the majority. But it's the Republicans whose numbers are rising. In the second half of our show, we have two stories of people in this charged political environment this fall trying to come to a meeting of the minds. We'll pick up with Alabama's Steven King again in a little bit. Where we turn now is to a visit to a different wing of the party, people who are Republicans, but not for religious reasons, but for economic ones. 70% of Republicans approve of the way that President Bush is handling the economy. That's versus just 22% of Democrats who approve. We have arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, Indecent Proposal. Shane DuBow tells the story of Republicans who work in a place where everyone is thinking about the economy and its ups and downs all the time.

Shane Dubow

Every election season, a company-wide email goes out at my work. The email reminds everyone that our office is supposed to be a politics-free zone. The subtext is all about keeping things civil and productive. At my friend Mike's work, that's not how they do it.

Shane Dubow

This is the cattle pit of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It's the morning after Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani have given speeches at the Republican National Convention in New York.

Shane Dubow

What Mike means is that it has been a bad two days to be one of the only outspoken Democrats in a testosterone-charged pit full of some of the most right-leaning and red meat-eating traders on the floor. Every day, all day, he gets heckled. During the election season it gets worse. With that in mind, Mike has come up with this idea, this way to win a few converts, or at least score a few political points. His plan? Take some of these guys to see the Michael Moore movie Fahrenheit 9/11. And to get them to go, he's offering cash.

Shane Dubow

After a month of trying and failing to make this movie thing happen, he has finally found some takers, Bill and Tom.

Shane Dubow

This is Bill.

Shane Dubow

The political arguments these guys get into will probably sound familiar. There's the one about terrorism.

Shane Dubow

The one about the economy.

Shane Dubow

The other one about the economy.

Shane Dubow

And then there's whatever you call this.

Shane Dubow

Tom is 49, tall and good looking, a former college basketball player. In Tom's world, the flat tax is the fairest tax, Fox is the fairest network, and nationalized health care will lead to socialism. Growing up, Tom says, his family didn't have a lot of money.

Shane Dubow

He's looking straight at Mike here.

Shane Dubow

As for Bill, he's also an independent broker who had to work growing up. And he also doesn't think much of taxes or welfare, which brings us back to Mike, and his hopes for Michael Moore's latest movie.

Shane Dubow

Even before the main feature, it's clear Bill and Tom are ready to find liberal plots behind whatever they see. Example. When a preview for the new shark movie Open Water comes on, and a young couple is shown treading water, Tom and Bill make jokes about Chappaquiddick. I asked Mike for a few predictions.

Shane Dubow

The movie starts. Right away, Mike's bid to win these guys over seems in trouble. Here is an early scene showing black members of Congress protesting the 2000 election results in a joint session. Al Gore is presiding as president of the senate.

Shane Dubow

When Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, explains how President Bush was obsessed with invading Iraq, even before September 11, Bill whispers that Clarke had an axe to grind, because he got passed over for a promotion. And Tom says, "Right, so he's bitter. They're interviewing a bitter ex-employee." Even the movie's celebrity walk-ons get the treatment.

Shane Dubow

You get the idea. Sarcastic comments from Tom, dismissive chitchat from Bill. A lot of hopeful, see? See what I means? from Mike. And every now and then, a moment of silence, when it's hard to tell how exactly the movie is going over. By the end, though, Mike seems encouraged.

As we leave the theater, he asks Tom about a few scenes, like the one where Bush, at a black tie fundraiser, first dubs the crowd a collection of haves and have mores, and then says, "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."

Shane Dubow

I asked Tom and Bill if anything in the movie, anything at all, struck a chord. Tom mentions the part where Bush is said to have opposed better pay and benefits for soldiers. He says if that's true, it's disturbing. Bill agrees. Both men say they'll go home and do some research, see if Michael Moore's quote unquote "facts" check out.

Shane Dubow

They don't even believe one of the points in the movie that's actually backed up by the Independent and Bipartisan 9/11 Commission, that there's no meaningful link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

Shane Dubow

Then Bill weighs in on the one part of the movie I thought might be persuasive, the part where the pro-military mother from Flint, Michigan loses her son in Iraq.

Shane Dubow

It's at this point that Tom turns, reaches into his back pocket, and pulls out a wad of folded papers he's printed off the internet.

Shane Dubow

Mike doesn't exactly see it that way. He's still surprisingly hopeful, even though he's worked on these guys for seven straight hours, including the movie. And to me it seems like they haven't budged.

Shane Dubow

When I call Mike for an update, he says that for a few days after the movie, he got more grief than ever out on the trading floor. Tom brought in a copy of Zell Miller's Republican Convention speech, and took to reading it out loud whenever there was a lull. But then all the politics started to wear people out. The back and forth got old and the teasing died down. And then just when things were returning to normal, Mike says, two other Republican traders approached him on the floor. They had gone to see Fahrenheit 9/11 on their own, they said. They each wanted their $400.

Ira Glass

Shane DuBow, in Chicago.

Ira Glass

Act Four, It's My Party. So Steven King, Christian Republican from Alabama, came to the Republican Convention in New York, wanting to debate the issues. And Patrick Howell, gay Republican from Florida, came to the Convention wanting to debate the issues. So it only seems right that somebody, somebody, would get those two crazy kids together.

Ira Glass

They hit it off right away. Patrick, it turns out-- and two brothers and a sister-- went to school up in Alabama, at Samford University, the Baptist school where, coincidentally, Steven got his law degree. Patrick was Sigma Nu. So was Steven's brother. Patrick's sister still lives a few miles from Birmingham. Steven knew the town and the high school her kids are going to.

Ira Glass

After a few minutes of Southern comfortableness, they got down to business. Patrick said that while of course he and Steven would agree that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, our idea of those principles changes over time. Slavery was abolished. Women got the right to vote. And it's the same with rights for gays and lesbians, he said.

Ira Glass

They talked about gay marriage. Patrick ticked off a list of problems that gay couples face right now because they can't marry. Visitation in hospitals when a partner is sick, inheriting property when a partner dies. Even if there's a will, family members can contest it in court, he says. Steven said he'd never heard about that one.

Steven said his main problem with letting gays marry-- or have civil unions in some states-- is that it's hard to imagine that it would just be confined to a few states. Surely, he said, some liberal judge would make all the states recognize the marriages. And from his point of view, it's just the next thing in a slippery slope. Christians lost the right to pray in schools, there's Roe versus Wade, then no-fault divorce. This is just one more thing that he's teaching his kids is wrong, that society says is OK.

The fact that Patrick's religious, goes to church, his six-year-old son goes to a religious school, all means something to Steven.

Ira Glass

Steven said that if the Republican Party ever became pro-choice, he'd definitely have to leave. On gay issues, he'll wait and see how he feels. Like he says, what's probably going to happen is, either Patrick's going to be unhappy with the party's position-- and struggling from within to change it-- or Steven will.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself, with Diane Cook, Wendy Dorr, Jane Feltes, Sarah Koenig, and Lisa Pollack. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Elizabeth Meister runs our website. Production help from Todd Bachmann and Amy O'Leary.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

You know, you can download audio of our show at audible.com/thisamericanlife, where they have public radio programs, best-selling books, even The New York Times, all at audible.com. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who swears whenever we try to put him on the show--

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

PRI, Public Radio International.