What the GOP Might Have Been - Esquire Classic 2/17/17, 9:40 AM

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E D I T O R ’S N OT E S

What the GOP Might Have Been

KENDYL KEARLY • DECEMBER 7, 2016

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What the GOP Might Have Been - Esquire Classic 2/17/17, 9:40 AM

Republican senators, left to right, Jacob Javits (New York) and Bob Dole (Kansas) in
Washington D.C., 1981

Jacob Javits did not hate Republicans.

The senator from New York did not enter the party for the purposes of destroying
it from within. Javits was a Republican because he believed in the party’s
principles of individual freedom and economic growth. No one who’s read his
1959 Esquire piece “The Future of the Republican Party” can doubt his intentions
as he writes of Republicanism’s illustrious history. However, he underlined the
party’s flaws with unflinching language feared a permanent minority status if the
party could not “bring its philosophy and practice within the context of modern
times.” His was a party at war with itself as the more conservative and liberal
sectors battled. But Javits wanted the ideals of Republicanism to be “truly
understood and intellectually applied.”

That phrase contains a haunting ring as Donald Trump prepares to be sworn in

and his once-staunchest opponents sacrifice their pride—and maybe more—in
hopes of securing cabinet positions. Moderate Republicans hold their noses to
support a president-elect who does not truly understand their original values.

At the top of Javits’s priority list was equal opportunity. Javits argued for the
appointment of female Senate pages (hiring one of the first), desegregation of
schools, and an indiscriminatory immigration policy. He called civil rights not
only a critical domestic issue but a cause that “signalizes to the world the degree
of American fidelity to the principles of freedom we profess.” This inclusive call
to action ignites a modern nostalgia for politicians who spoke this way rather
than those who generalize Mexicans as rapists.

Javits’s wishes for the Republican Party almost comically dissent from Trump’s
campaign promises. Javits saw the economic and ethical value of eradicating
gross income inequality; doubling foreign aid spending; supporting the UN and
our NATO allies; enacting labor legislation to protect minorities; creating tax

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What the GOP Might Have Been - Esquire Classic 2/17/17, 9:40 AM

breaks for small businesses rather than monopolies; profit sharing; and
investing in education and prioritizing social welfare. Javits supported all this
with values that are both American and Republican. He wanted responsible
spending and a mostly free economy but pursued these goals with rational
thought and respect for all people.

The Javits column isn’t the only time Esquire reflected on this kind of
Republican mentality. In 1958, Theodore Irwin profiled Ogden Rogers Reid, the
publisher behind Republican paper The New York Herald Tribune. With a front
page editorial, Reid secured for Javits the Republican Senate nomination in New
York. Reid spoke about “a modern Republican Party, representing the majority of
Americans short of the extreme right and left. Our role is to help build such a
party, and working toward that end, the strength of the free world will grow.”

Javits’s and Reid’s desire for unification and moderation went unanswered long
before the 2016 election. Javits lost his 1980 Senate race because of both health
problems and a failure to comply with the far-right push of the party. That was
the year, after all, Reagan ascended to the presidency, and with him,
ultraconservatism. (In a 1983 political column, Alan Baron attributed the shift in
ideology to issue-oriented activists of the late 1960s.) By the time Reagan was
running for reelection, even someone as right-identified as Bob Dole was fighting
(and losing to) the radicals. The trend continued, so that by 2012, it’s no wonder
Esquire columnist Charles P. Pierce wrote:

The Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels,
has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning
elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around
the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning
nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to
survive what we wrought upon ourselves.

And that was before Donald Trump came to Washington.

In the 2016 election, Republicans scorned Javits’s ideas of a better free world and
voted for a man who embodies privilege and selfishness. The candidate who
more closely resembled his viewpoint — Hillary Clinton — held her Election

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What the GOP Might Have Been - Esquire Classic 2/17/17, 9:40 AM

Night party at, of all places, Manhattan’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. It has
an enormous glass ceiling that was supposed to represent a triumph. Perhaps
Javits’s legacy of equality is most appreciated among tearful supporters and
undetonated fireworks.

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