The first of those costs is corruption. The corruption can be but isn’t necessarily financial. More often, it involves a warping of mission, a pull from the purpose that originally animated a person or enterprise to pursue a goal.
This leads to a second cost—the steady erosion of support and standing. When it becomes clear that an organization stands for nothing larger than personal retribution, it becomes almost impossible for others to honor or respect it.
The shabby saga surrounding Indiana Rep. Ed Clere—a Republican, for the moment anyway, from New Albany—is a telling example.
Clere announced a few days ago that he would not be returning to the Indiana House of Representatives. He plans to run for mayor in New Albany—as an independent, not a Republican.
He added that he wasn’t leaving his party. His party had left him, he said.
That has become a cliché among thinking Republicans.
I remember hearing the late Bill Hudnut, a four-term Republican mayor of Indianapolis, lament that he felt the GOP he still believed in had deserted both him and its own core convictions.
Since then, I’ve lost track of the number of Republicans who have said similar things to me. They always speak with sadness, never with anger. When they talk, it’s as if they were mourning the death of a family member or someone close to them.
After Clere made his announcement, the Republicans in the House kicked him out of their caucus, even though he said he wanted to continue working with them through the end of this legislative session.
It was a small, petty gesture.
But, sadly, a predictable one these days.
Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith—who has elevated the pursuit of his own political and promotional self-interest to a new form of theology—crowed over Clere’s departure. The preening Beckwith said Clere was one of the most “liberal” Republicans in Indiana and all but shouted “good riddance.”
In fact, Clere is a classic conservative—a leader whose thinking certainly is more doctrinaire than that of our lieutenant governor, whose political thought and understanding are as coherent as a bowl of sliced-and-diced spaghetti.
I can’t claim to know Clere well, but I’ve had a few substantive conversations with him over the years. He’s always struck me as a guy who takes his responsibilities seriously without taking himself too seriously.
And he is conservative.
His argument most often springs from a conviction that the burden always should be on government to prove it belongs in certain spheres, particularly the ones that most intimately affect people’s lives.
His advocacy of transgender citizens always has been advanced as proof of his supposed “liberalism.” In fact, it is the opposite. He thinks such decisions should be left to the individuals, their families and their doctors—and that politicians should have to demonstrate why such personal matters are any of their business.
This belief that government always should be restrained once was an essential tenet of conservative and therefore Republican orthodoxy.
No longer.
In this era of Donald Trump and his acolytes such as Beckwith, possessing power has become its own justification for using—or abusing—it.
And the GOP busies itself chasing people such as Clere away from the party, shrinking the size of the Republican tent every time they do.
The dwindling band of thoughtful Indiana Republicans who remain in the party should ponder this moment, a moment that could prove to be a tipping point.
In his quest to become secretary of state, Beau Bayh—possessed of a potent family name and an abundant political war chest—has not been subtle regarding his invitations for Bill Hudnut, Richard Lugar, Mitch Daniels and now perhaps Ed Clere Republicans to join him.
Bayh’s message is clear.
If Indiana Republicans can’t find space at their table for anyone who doesn’t agree with them on everything, there will be plenty of room for the GOP outcasts at his.
Politics, the cliché goes, is about addition, not subtraction. The people who are good at it pull people in, not drive them away.
Yet now many, perhaps even most, Indiana Republicans celebrate diminishing their own base of support. In doing so, they seem oblivious to the fact that they’re telling people they don’t have enough confidence in their own positions to tolerate disagreements, even relatively minor ones.
Yes, pettiness exacts costs.
