A good friend of mine, a lifelong hard-core Republican, often quips that America has a two-party system—The Bad Party, and the Stupid Party, and he’s in the Stupid Party. The upcoming primary season will test that aphorism. It’s got me thinking about the 2006 and 2010 elections.
In 2006, a bunch of self-styled “conservatives” were mad at Gov. Bob Ehrlich. In four years in office, he hadn’t banned abortion or granted gun carry permits on demand in Maryland. These ‘Constitutional scholars’ seemed oblivious to the fact that a governor cannot overturn laws on a whim—and that it was unlikely the heavily Democratic legislature would pass such laws. He didn’t give them what they wanted. That made them angry—so angry they stayed home on election day.
And, boy, they showed us. Their absence was enough to ensure the election of Martin O’Malley, a man who would give them nothing they wanted, and 40+ tax and fee increases to boot. Their response was about what you’d expect: they spent the next eight years fuming about O’Malley’s policies and looking for somebody else to blame. (Ehrlich also lost many Democrats who had voted for him the first time.)
At the same time, a bunch of Libertarians and Constitution Party members were looking for a new home after being decertified as parties because of lack of votes. They ran for Republican central committees to represent the “grass roots.” They attacked solid Republicans as RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) while posing as the “true conservatives.”
Many of them won races because activists vote in primary elections, and few people really understand what central committees do anyway. Once on the committees, they pursued the same politics that got their previous parties decertified. They demanded unquestioning allegiance to their “principles,” even though those principles kept changing.
Politics is, someone once said, the art of addition. Rather than practice that art, they alienated rank-and-file Republicans who, in response, closed their check books. Soon, the state party was nearly bankrupt.
Dems prop up bad candidates
On the national level, the 2010 midterm elections were likely to flip the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate back to the GOP. But Stupid Party is as Stupid Party does. And in several states, in their war against alleged RINOS, ‘true conservatives’ pushed forward candidates who had no hope of winning a general election.
Marylanders will best remember Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, a perennial nuisance candidate who dabbled in Wicca, and had to declare, “I’m not a witch.” Much the same happened in Missouri and Nevada where Democrats propped up GOP candidates they thought would be—and were—easy pickings in November.
It would take another four years and better candidates and party discipline for the GOP to retake the Senate, and, here in Maryland, for Larry Hogan to win the governorship.
Now, the Libertarian-Constitution Party coalition that cratered the Maryland GOP after 2006 is backing Dan Cox for governor. Cox, whose sole qualification seems to be an unshakeable allegiance to Trump, seems to be OK with these people attacking his fellow Republicans. And the Democrats are using their 2010 playbook, helping Cox surreptitiously in order to face a weak Republican in November.
The Democrats know what seems lost on Cox’s supporters: that, in Maryland, Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by 26% and to Joe Biden by 33%. Democrats are counting on Cox to be a drag on the Republican vote, which will help them keep legislative seats and newly drawn congressional seats in what is shaping up to be a banner year for Republicans elsewhere.
Del. Herb McMillan MarylandReporter.com photo by Glynis Kazanjian
McMillan vs. the GOP
The same is playing out in the race for Anne Arundel County executive. Former Del. Herb McMillan is attacking County Council member Jessica Haire from the right for not being supportive enough of Trump while he is being attacked from further to the right by John Grasso – ironically, for not being supportive enough of Trump.
McMillan has had a long and troubled history with the Republican party, culminating in his apparent quitting the GOP in 2017. Apparently, he felt the nomination to the Annapolis-based District 30 Senate seat was his by right, even though he never filed candidacy papers. So much so that he was angry with people who had rallied to Ron George’s declared candidacy and had not asked if he wanted to run.
The late Mike Busch, then speaker of the House of Delegates and a District 30 delegate, identified McMillan’s persistent character flaw in a piece in The Capital newspaper. He said, “I have been in the General Assembly for over 30 years and, regardless of political affiliation or policy views, no one before Herb McMillan has ever questioned another member’s patriotism.” He then outlined numerous areas where McMillan stabbed his fellow Republicans in the back.
That summer, after McMillan wound up attacking the owner of Harry Browne’s restaurant on State Circle, Rusty Romo, in The Capital and launching a push-poll against Senate candidate Ron George, I wrote a snarky piece in the newspaper about Herb’s “issues.”
In the end, the price to get him to drop out of the race—again, which he had never officially entered—was for the state party chairman and the House Minority leader to denounce me in The Capital, and for the Hogan administration to place his legislative assistant in an administration job. After his demands were met, he declared he would not be a candidate. But, in a final grace note, he told off the state party in an open letter, took his ball, and went home.
Back running for executive
And yet, now he is back, running for the Republican nomination to be Anne Arundel County Executive. They say the definition of chutzpah is a man who killed his parents pleading for mercy because he’s an orphan. Perhaps the new definition is the politician who publicly quits a party then seeks its nomination.
Besides this unenviable track record, McMillan has additional baggage from his last term in the House of Delegates, baggage that the Democrats will be more than happy to unpack this fall. So, McMillan could reprise his 2001 performance, when he lost the Annapolis mayor’s race to an uninspiring Ellen Moyer in an otherwise good year for the GOP, by losing to the undistinguished incumbent Democrat Steuart Pittman in another year which should be great for Republicans.
It’s no wonder why the Democrats are salivating at the prospect of facing Dan Cox and Herb McMillan in the general election. It would make their efforts to retain power easier by driving up Democrats’ enthusiasm and depressing Republicans’.
The late commentator Mark Shields, who died last week, said, “There are two kinds of parties just like there are two kinds of churches: those who seek out converts and those who hunt down heretics.”
So, with the primary election looming and Cox and McMillan squarely in the latter group, Republicans need to ask themselves an important question: Do you want a fighting chance to win in November or are you satisfied to be in the Stupid Party?
