To what or whom do you pay allegiance

I would love to see a nationwide poll of voters asking: To what do you owe your greater allegiance - your political party or your country?

Twenty years ago, the answer would have been a no-brainer. But I’m not so sure today. Regardless of what people might tell a pollster, their attitudes and actions demonstrate that political party takes precedence over their allegiance to the country.

But it’s not just the party. For today’s Republicans, their allegiance is to just one man: Donald Trump. In reality, there is no Republican Party today - just Trump. Either you pledge allegiance to Fearless Leader or you are out, nothing, nada.

How else can you explain that long-serving members of Congress either left office or have genuflected to the Donald? Or how can you explain why, amidst constant harangues by Trump (and Republicans) about immigration, a negotiated bi-partisan immigration plan, one many believed could curb massive immigration and had enough votes to pass Congress, was suddenly scuttled when Donald Trump vetoed it. And please help me understand why his cult seems willing to forgive his crimes, his outlandish conduct, absence of morality or his incessant lies and still pledge allegiance to him.

Donald makes a lot of noise about making America great again, but it’s really all show. It’s all about Trump and he has no loyalty to his followers in return.

We’ve had other demagogues in our history, George Wallace comes to mind. But Trump most reminds me of Joseph McCarthy. In his first term, the Wisconsin Senator quickly seized the stage by telling bombastic lies supporting Nazis after World War II, saying how they had been persecuted in America. When those claims were proved false, McCarthy then took on the cause of persecuting communists, declaring there were hundreds of Communists who had infiltrated federal agencies. In the fifties he coerced the Senate to conduct televised hearings, browbeating and threatening witnesses in every facet of life, especially Hollywood. His claims were never substantiated. It is no surprise that Roy Cohn (one of Trump’s mentors) was McCarthy’s chief legal counsel. McCarthy’s reign of terror came to an end when he attacked the US Army, defended by lawyer Joseph Welch.

Welch addressed McCarthy on live TV, "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

It was like blinders were removed and eyes could see. The Congress and the public realized what McCarthy was doing to intimidate, divide and assimilate power was filled with untruths and an attack on decency. In 1954, Americans thought of themselves as decent people. McCarthy was discarded like yesterday’s news.

That was 70 years ago. Can’t we see a similar sham being perpetrated today? Republicans have allowed a once great political party to be completely hijacked.

We see it here in North Carolina with characters like Madison Cawthorn and Mark Robinson. True, there have been Democrats who have been bad actors, but the Republican party is now a slave to a man whose morals, decency, outlandish statements and loyalty to our Republic are lacking.

Need we be reminded this was exactly what George Washington tried to warn us about in his Farewell Address to the nation in 1796.

Warning about the evils of factions [political parties], Washington said, “However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.”

Washington warned Americans of the great dangers that could occur if they pledged their allegiance to a political party or politician. That warning is playing out today.

Just as there was a great awakening over Joseph McCarthy’s scurrilous actions we are in need of another awakening. Let us pledge our allegiance to the republic instead of to a person or a faction.  

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965.  Contact him at tomcamp@carolinabroadcasting.com