Democrat Legislators Switching To GOP? Why??

The new, GOP-dominated Legislature hasn't even met for the first time, and already we're seeing people jockey for political advantage. I hope you've heard this already, it was big news over the weekend. Four Democrats in the Legislature are supposed to make an announcement sometime today that they will be switching parties and becoming Republicans.
http://tinyurl.com/2bo8t8b

The remaining white Demo­crats appear ready to begin jump­ing off the Titanic.

Four white Democrats in the Alabama House of Representa­tives are expected to announce on Monday that they are switching parties.

While Republicans already have an easy majority, those four switches would give them 66 mem­bers, which would be a superma­jority that could shut Democrats out of debate and gut any potential stalling tactics.

The four white Democrats who are expected to switch parties are Alan Boothe of Troy, Mike Milli­can of Hamilton, Lesley Vance of Phenix City and Steve Hurst of Munford. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't these guys just finish running for office as Democrats? Yes, I thought so, about three weeks ago. I'm doubting that any fundamental change in political philosophy has occurred in all four Legislators, so that means the switch must be motivated by political advantage.

What a surprise.


With the Democrats in the minority, these Legislators will not get choice committee assignments. They will be, essentially, ignored by the majority party as much as possible. They'd rather hand the GOP a super-majority and take good committees as their payoff.

But see, this is a good example of why I dislike party switching. The way that the parties themselves sell things, the Democrats are liberal and the Republicans are conservative. However, given that these four Democrats haven't changed their political views, how can we keep believing that? Allowing politicians to change political parties like dirty socks (which, by the way, bear a lot of resemblance to political parties)... well, that merely dilutes the parties until they don't stand for anything.

Didn't we see that recently in Congress? Democrats wanted to win a majority, so they recruited candidates who were more conservative than the bulk of the elected Democrats in Congress, and those candidates managed to win election in conservative districts. Lo and behold, when Obama wanted to shove a socialist health care "reform" bill down our throats, the "more conservative" Democrats balked and wouldn't support all of what the party wanted to accomplish.

Imagine you have two pitchers, one filled to the brim with iced tea and the other filled with raw sewage. (I use this example because both parties seem to view the other's views as toxic.) Now pour some of each into a pitcher; empty the glass of tea into the raw sewage pitcher, and vice versa. Keep doing that, representing several cycles of elections and politicians switching parties. Now look at the pitchers.

Now, who wants to take a swig from either pitcher? Yeah, me neither.

That's what our political parties are doing to themselves by accepting party switchers who change because it's to their personal political advantage. Diluting the political ideology doesn't help anyone... except, maybe, the politicians who are thinking only of themselves.

For those who aren't sure if these switches are being made for personal political advantage, I'm afraid that's not even in question.

But they stand a better chance of helping their constituents and winning better committee assign­ments in the new Republican ma­jority.

Those four Democrats might just be the first to switch teams. Alabama Democrats in the Legis­lature have never served in the mi­nority and they will undoubtedly hate it.

Party switchers are usually counter-productive. What good is another Republican that gives you a majority if they don't share your political convictions?

The GOP will accept these switchers with open arms. Why? Because the party has no firm convictions and principles to speak of. I'm not seeing a great deal to inspire hope from the new GOP majority in our State.