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I want to comment on a discussion in my regular politics newsgroup, beginning with a news article about the Lyndhurst NJ mayor and town council. Until recently, every single one was a Republican; as a body, they changed their party affiliation to Democrat. Over half the Republican county committee have done the same. (In New Jersey, counties are more significant than towns for arcane reasons, and have correspondingly larger governing bodies.)

Disgust for the dirtbags who have led the Republicans for the past decade or so has grown so thick that it’s damaging the party’s chances at all levels of government, even for the decent Republicans the Rove-Delay party scheme has allowed to remain in place. Participants in the same newsgroup I mentioned above are increasingly reporting political literature in their locales designed to hide Republican affiliation: blue is quietly replacing red as the color of choice, the word “Republican” mysteriously fails to appear anywhere on yard signs for Republican candidates, and pamphlets have stopped including ways to contact, or even learn more about, a candidate. Giving out a phone number or email address leads to too many pointed questions. At the national level, resignations are epidemic within the party, in part out of disgust for what the party has become, in part out of grim calculation for the chances of re-election.

I don’t know the motivation, or combination of motivations, behind the move in Lyndhurst. Although Lyndhurst is just down the figurative road, it’s not big news even here in Montclair, and gets even less attention in the national press, so finding enough information for analysis is tough. My best guess is that a small-town boss decided to switch, possibly ahead of a personal scandal and in need of protection, taking his cronies with him. I don’t know that the decision reflected national politics in any way, but I suspect that’s part of it. Don’t expect many more mass desertions like this, but individual politicians are switching horses in record numbers.

And I’m not sure whether to cheer or sneer at it.

On the one hand, I can sympathize with Republicans who have simply had enough. Like Republican voters themselves, they may have been betrayed by party leaders willing to sell everything—education, the poor, human rights, free market ideals, ideals of small government, American pride, American world standing, the US treasury, the US army, the US Constitution, a habitable planet, everything—for personal profit. Not only did the jackals now in charge get elected on bad policies, but once in office, they failed to deliver on even those bad policies, substituting wholesale corruption. A voter taken in by Bush in 2000 was foolish. A voter taken in by Bush in 2004 is a damned fool. Still, I can sympathize with disgust for a party that doesn’t even pretend to seek to live up to its ideals any longer. Like a voter, a Republican politician, especially a local one, might never have been part of that corruption in the first place.

On the other hand, this kind of massive party change seems a little too convenient, a little too obvious an attempt to duck responsibility. The time to stand up and be counted was before the mess got made. Waiting until after the mess is made, the mess is discovered, the voters begin to get angry about the mess, and announcing pangs of conscience just before the courts begin issuing subpoenas is not enough. And I think it’s fair to hold our elected officials to higher standards of conduct than we do voters who get bamboozled. The politicians get to see legal sausage getting made on a daily basis, and it’s their job to have a grasp of the issues our government faces.

The winds of politics shift, the tide turns, and suddenly the armbands come off. “Oh, no, no. I wasn’t really one of them. No rioters here, just ordinary people minding their business. No Nazis, just ordinary German soldiers. None of those neocons busy wrecking your country, just good, honest, real Republicans. That claim is particularly hard to swallow in an organization that values loyalty above all else, and has made political hay out of enforcing a party line, and out of handing every government function in reach to someone who could be trusted to place party before honesty, morality, and the law.

The debate in my politics forum is over whether to welcome such party deserters with open arms or whether to hold them accountable for their participation in the culture of corruption. There’s something to be said for both positions, on both principle and expedience. Accepting Republican refugees makes room in our political institutions for discussion, debate, and changing one’s mind. A willingness to change your mind in the light of evidence is no sin in politics; on the contrary, it is a vanishingly rare virtue. More practically, accepting party refugees also allows us to absorb, at least for a while, their voting blocks and political power. On the other hand, democracy cannot function without government accountability. Mistakes were made, crimes committed, oaths violated. The best way to ensure it doesn’t happen again is to hold the bastards’ feet to the fire until they squeak. Let it slide, and you prove that corrupt government has nothing to lose. And, as the current crop of presidential hopefuls proves, a lot of Republicans still consider the Bush agenda of privatization, militancy, and presidential privilege good and decent and politically viable. Almost regardless of individual candidates, this country needs a massive overturning of power to the Democrats—not because the Democratic party is good and noble (it isn’t), but in order to scare both parties stiff of trying to cut themselves lose from accountability. Bush and company will never pay for what they’ve done, but their party can still profit from a good thrashing.

With this in mind, perhaps a sort of compromise response would be better: welcome the Republicans as they bail out, but not really. Accept their support and participation for a rising Democratic tide without returning real support for their further careers. This would have the effect of a big win come 2012 without institutionalizing the freedom to stay in power no matter how badly one governs.

Best of all, of course, would be to weigh each candidate on his own merits. Some ship-jumpers must be decent people, others no doubt only seek to join the winning side. Actually go and look at public statements, private statements when you can find them, and above all voting record. That’s a lot of work, but it’s the essence of a working democracy. Not only is this the only way to separate the sheepdogs from the coyotes, it can apply to both sides of the aisle. Republicans aren’t the only ones seeking to cut themselves loose from participation in the atrocities of the past eight years; a number of Democrats are squirming (or ought to be squirming) now that their acquiescence is beginning to look like it might lose more votes than taking a stand would have lost. A certain senator from New York is desperately hoping you won’t ask why she endorsed a war in Iraq, or even remember that she did. Shamefully, she is not alone.

Although I may vote for Hillary in preference to whichever bastard the Republicans choose to run, just as I may hope the Lyndhurst defections will contribute to a nationwide turn in the very dirty tide of the current presidency, I am no more inclined to forgive her than I am inclined to forgive Republicans who should have known better.