True Republicans drawn to Obama

Former congressman Leach's endorsement of the Democratic candidate in line with the GOP's original values

John Nichols  —  8/27/2008 6:51 am

RIPON -- When former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach -- a Republican stalwart with close ties to the Bush family -- endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, he made a point of noting that he was not switching parties.

"As a Republican, I stand before you with deep respect for the history and traditions of my political party. But it is clear to all Americans that something is out of kilter in our great republic," explained Leach, who argued that Obama's "transformative campaign" represents "a clarion call for renewal rooted in time-tested American values that tap Republican as well as Democratic traditions."

Leach said those Republican traditions include a commitment to individual rights, fairness, equality and "progressive internationalism."

Leach's outline of traditional Republican values is correct.

Democratic loyalists might debate how far back in the party's history one must go in search of those values. But if you go all the way back, to a little white schoolhouse located just off the main street in this quiet eastern Wisconsin college town, you will find roots that look very much like those described by Leach on the day that he endorsed the first African-American candidate ever nominated for the presidency by a major American party.

In many senses, Obama's nomination is the culmination of a political journey begun not in the southern precincts to which the Democratic Party traces its roots, but to a March 20, 1854, meeting where a political provocateur named Alvan Bovay called together his socialist neighbors in order to form a new party that would fight for "free soil, free speech, free men."

In the 1850s, Ripon was a hotbed of radical ideas. A decade earl

ier, in the winter of 1843, a series of lectures at the Franklin Lyceum in Southport (now Kenosha) inspired several dozen men and women to adopt the views of Charles Fourier, a visionary French socialist thinker who sought to restructure society into cooperative agricultural communities called "phalanxes." The newly committed "Fourierites" pooled their meager resources and purchased land on the edge of what is now Ripon. Their Wisconsin phalanx, known as Ceresco, proved to be a success, eventually growing in population to a peak of 180. By the early 1850s, the utopian agricultural community -- including buildings that stand to this day -- had been incorporated into Ripon.

Bovay initially preached the anti-slavery gospel on the streets of New York, where he had sought to organize working men into a radical political party. He had limited success there and eventually followed the advice of his friend and mentor, newspaper editor Horace Greeley, to "go west, young man."

In Ripon, Bovay found plenty of support for his view that the "old parties" of the day -- the conservative Democrats and the slightly more liberal Whigs -- had failed to respond to the moral requirement that the United States end the practice of slavery. The campaigner gathered his followers at Ripon's schoolhouse on a cold, late-winter night and formed a new party that they named "Republican" because the word was, to Bovay's view," suggestive of equality."

The new party sought that equality not just for slaves, but for all workers, declaring in an early platform that its intent was to join "the old battle -- not yet over -- between the rights of the toiling many and the special privileges of the aristocratic few." That platform promised to promote women's rights, defend immigrants, advance trade union organizing, limit the amount of land that any individual could own and forbid corporate monopolies.

One of the first Wisconsinites attracted to its banner was Carl Schurz, a leader of the radical German revolution of 1848 -- which also had been influenced by Fourier's ideas. By 1854, Schurz had settled in Watertown and soon became a leader of Wisconsin's burgeoning German community.

Schurz rejected invitations to run for office on the Democrat line because he thought the party was too conservative. But he joined the new party and, within a few years, became one of its first statewide candidates.

Shortly before leaving Wisconsin to join the administration of his close friend and ally, Abraham Lincoln, Schurz addressed students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In that speech, he promised that Republicans would establish "a higher order" defined by a commitment to equality, economic common sense and a responsible foreign policy.

Leach, who once chaired the moderate Ripon Society -- a group that took its name from the Wisconsin community when it was formed to fight the rise of the Republican right -- says that he now hears the themes sounded at the founding of his party in the campaign of Barack Obama. That still did not make switching sides easy, says Leach. "Part of it is political parties are a distant analog to families, and you really hate to step outside a family environment," says the former congressman.

But Leach suggests that in this year of transformational politics, there will be many more "Republicans for Obama." Already, state Rep. Jeff Wood, who served several terms as a Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly, has filed for re-election as an independent and has declared that "there have been many of us frustrated with the party because of the abandonment of the principles we believed the party stood for."

State Rep. Gordon Hintz, an Oshkosh Democrat who represents a district near Ripon, thinks Obama should campaign in the region, perhaps even in Ripon.

"Republicans of today are nothing like the Republicans who founded that party," says Hintz. "Barack Obama should be talking about that fact, and suggesting that he is the candidate that people who appreciate the old Republican values should be supporting."

It might not be all that hard.

In the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Obama carried Ripon -- not merely with more votes than his challenger for the nomination, but with more than any of the Republicans.

In fact, in the birthplace of Republicanism, Obama got more votes in the 2008 Democratic primary than George Bush got in the 2004 general election.

Perhaps Leach should open his "Republicans for Obama" headquarters in Ripon.

Doubtless, Alvan Bovay would approve.

jnichols@madison.com

John Nichols  —  8/27/2008 6:51 am