Is Chesco GOP returning to its roots?

The replacement of Chester County GOP

Chair Dr. Gordon Eck last month creates an opportunity for the local Republican party to write a new chapter in its biography.

Eck’s successor, Dr. Raffi Terzian, spoke very little about policies and positions in his public comments leading up to the party’s election, focusing instead on how he wants to unify the party and change its leadership model.

The question remains, then, whether Terzian will carry the county’s Republican party back to its roots, or further into the weeds. For while the Democrats’ messaging might not be attracting all the centrist voters they need, the national and local GOP’s recent evolution has alienated the core voters that made it a party with popular support for its platform.

Because somewhere along the line, the party gave up on popular ideas.

Republican legislators spent most of the Obama years trying to tear down the Affordable Care Act, a goal supported by only 42% of voters. After nearly 70 consecutive successful votes to repeal or weaken the law while Obama was still in office (and able to veto these attempts), as soon as a Republican became President, Republican legislators were suddenly unable to muster the votes required to repeal the ACA because they knew that tearing down a popular law would be politically unsavvy (and that repealing it would adversely impact millions of their own voters).

Paul Ryan, the “policy wonk” and “deficit hawk,” spent a decade plugging a tax cut program that was so popular among Washington Republicans that they made him the vice presidential candidate and Speaker of the House. But it was not as popular among voters. When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act became law, it enjoyed a razor thin minority of public approval at 49%, but within two years that plunged to 39%.

The grass roots of the GOP — and Dr. Eck no less than any of his peers — have been hyping up their war on teachers and schools over how and whether we should talk about race, but the majority of voters support increases in the amount schools focus on racism and its effects (and not witch hunts for secret Marxists).

Part of that attack is rooted in the GOP’s dislike of unions — including teachers’ unions — and it is not surprising that the AFL-CIO raised concerns about all three Supreme Court appointments made by Trump. These picks were not only about abortion. But here too, the party is out of step with America, where public approval of unions rose to 65% last year.

On abortion, the Justices that told us Roe v. Wade was “settled law” during their confirmations changed their minds the very first time it came up while they held a majority on the Supreme Court, a decision with which only 40% of Americans agree.

Vaccination against COVID 19 — which has contributed enormously to our return to normal and which sprung from Trump’s own Operation Warp Speed — finds favor among 80% of Americans, but the GOP still regularly finds time to demonize the vaccines and the CDC.

Fewer than 40% of Americans believe that the last election was stolen, but the GOP continues to push The Big Lie and, even where they tread more delicately, Pennsylvania Republicans aim to reform popular changes to our state’s election process that were not a source of fraud, as found by the Republican-led State Government Committee’s extensive hearings into the 2020 election.

On all of these issues, when the GOP speaks, they are at odds with the majority of Americans.

Terzian says that leadership in the party has been topdown, and Eck’s tenure provided ample evidence to suggest that the local GOP had been taking its cues from the national party and far-right media. The fact that Terzian beat Eck by 295-53 speaks strongly to the possibility that local Republicans have rejected national-level extremism and are ready to take their party back.

When I left the Republican Party six years ago, I knew then that the forces that dragged it off its moorings and cast it adrift started as small ripples. Now I hold out hope that the course back to being a party that listens to voters may start small again, right here in Chester County.