Chris Jacobs, a congressman from New York, uttered the unthinkable on national television the other day: “I’m now the only Republican that’s come out and said I’m in favor of an assault weapon ban.”
Wow.
Except there is a caveat: Jacobs is NOT seeking re-election. He is from the Buffalo area, the site of a mass shooting last month by an avowed White supremacist.
As Jacobs said, “I’m here for seven months. I think these could be a pivotal seven months for gun-control activity and legislation.”
For most conservative Republicans, staunch supporters of the National Rifle Association and ultimate believers in gun rights, the Second Amendment is the imprimatur for weapons.
Jacobs supports the assault weapon ban … on the way out of the door. Head for the hills. Why not stay and lead the fight for the ban since assault weapons shouldn’t be on the streets anyway?
Because Jacobs’ brethren will roast him mercilessly for being a moderate Republican on the gun issue. Conservatives repeatedly say assault weapons are used by farmers and ranchers to kill varmints. Which is comical.
By the way, whatever happened to the term “moderate Republican.” More specifically, what about “Rockefeller Republicans”?
Iconic Black bandleader Count Basie once said of his friend then-New York governor Nelson Rockefeller that Rockefeller was “rich enough to air-condition a cotton field.”
The family riches were derived from the oil business, thanks to patriarch John D. Rockefeller founding Standard Oil Co. in the 1800s. By today’s values, analysts figure he was worth $400 billion, or two to three times more than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
A “Rockefeller Republican” means fiscal prudence can coexist with a social conscience. To many right-wing conservatives, especially today, that phrase is an oxymoron.
Rockefeller, Gerald Ford’s vice president, supported civil rights for Black Americans, rejected conservative Barry Goldwater, supported cultural liberalism, and advocated investment in national health care, higher education and labor unions.
Even Richard Nixon adopted some of the principles of “Rockefeller Republicans,” such as creating the Environmental Protection Agency and signing Title IX in the 1970s.
In fiscal policy, “Rockefeller Republicans” believed in balanced budgets. Auto mogul George W. Romney — Mitt’s father — was a “Rockefeller Republican,” as was New York senator Jacob Javits, baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson, former EPA director and ex-New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman … and style icon Kim Kardashian — possibly.
Dr. Martin Luther King once said in the segregated 1960s, “If we had one or two governors in the Deep South like Nelson Rockefeller, many of our problems could be readily solved.”
Now, the term “Rockefeller Republican” is taboo in the conservative Republican party. Pure profanity. No centrists are allowed in the club.
The Rockefeller Institute of Government, a think tank in Albany, N.Y., reported that only five states experienced a decline in firearm deaths between 2019 and 2020, with New Hampshire having the largest decrease at 2.10 fewer deaths per 100,000 residents.
Perhaps, Jacobs would have been better off serving in the 1960s and 1970s during the height of “Rockefeller Republicans” instead of the 2020s, when the powerful right-wing rules the GOP.
Said Jacobs, “And, again, it’s about that level of trust … and, look, right now, I’m seeing this in our party that you can’t concede anything: Since I said I’m receptive to gun control, I’m ‘not really a Republican and I’m ostracized.’”
But there was a time when Senate Republicans — and Democrats during Watergate — voted 77-0 to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. As for Goldwater, he led the charge for Republicans against culpable Richard Nixon during Watergate.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Goldwater and fellow Republicans Hugh Scott and John Rhodes visited Nixon at the White House. As former Washington Post writer Carl Bernstein, one of the lead Watergate reporters at the time, recalled on CNN remembrances of the 50th anniversary of the 1972 scandal, “Goldwater pulled out this diary and started reading to us (Bernstein and Bob Woodward) how he and the leadership went to the Oval Office, sat across from Nixon, and Nixon asked him, ‘Barry, how many votes do I have in the Senate for acquittal in a Senate trial’ because Nixon knew he was going to be impeached by the full House.
“And Nixon really expected that he could be acquitted. And Goldwater looked at the president, directly across from him, and said, Mr. President, you may have four to six votes for acquittal, and you DON’T have mine. And the next day, Richard Nixon announced his resignation from the presidency.”
So there is precedent for doing what’s right — even for Republicans.
