About a month ago, I did something that my dad did 50 years ago: I left the political party I was pretty much raised in.

Or, to be more accurate, the party left us.

Fifty years ago, my dad, born and raised on a small cotton farm in northeast Mississippi, left the Democratic Party when John F. Kennedy secured the party’s nomination for president. I cannot say that my dad’s motives were entirely honorable: The fact that Kennedy was a Catholic played some role in my dad’s decision to disassociate from the party that had until then been the bastion for the conservative, protestant South ever since Reconstruction.

Even a progressive like FDR could not undermine my dad’s devotion to the Democratic Party. But the specter of Kennedy in the White House was too much for my dad to abide. So he moved over to the other side and became a Republican, a year before I was born, as it turned out.

So you might say I was raised on grits and conservative Republican politics. I have never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Maybe I never will. But I’m a lot more inclined to consider it a possibility at least.

So last month, when I was again permitted to register to vote (my right to vote was taken from me for three years after my DUI conviction), I registered not as a Republican, but as an Independent. Fifty years ago, my dad made the entire journey from one party to the other. But I still have an almost visceral aversion to what the Democratic Party stands for, which puts me in that growing mass of people who doesn’t trust either party any farther than we can throw ‘em.

So it is not as though the Democrats have done anything to inspire me to join their side. Rather, I am leaving the Republican Party because I am a conservative.

That might sound odd, I realize, since most folks would consider the Republican Party as the voice of conservative America.

But the brand of conservatism that the Republicans offer today is not the conservatism I grew up on.

As a means of illustrating what I mean, I’ll use this analogy. In recent years, the “sport” of Ultimate Fighting has emerged as the popular rival to boxing. Essentially, Ultimate Fighting is boxing that has been stripped of all artistry, athleticism and intelligence – the qualities that made boxing a legitimate sport. All that is left is naked savagery. There is no art, no nuance. It is a dumbed-down distortion of a great sport and popular to the point of being disturbing. I think it says something not at all flattering about what we have become as a society.

Well, what passes for conservatism today is the Ultimate Fighting version of true conservative ideals. It is loud. It is savage. It is unthinking. And it is popular.

But I miss the conservatism I grew up on, the kind I respected for its intelligent pragmatism. The conservatism I embraced focused on solving problems rather than promoting blind dogma. It was the kind of conservatism that could compromise a point, but never a conviction.

Today’s conservatism rings hollow. It is jingoistic, mean-spirited and unreasoning. It is blind and furious, more inclined to shed head rather than light.

Chances are, I might have remained in the Republican Party had I not moved to Arizona 12 years ago.

But a dozen years of watching Arizona’s leading Republicans – people like Thayer Verschoor, Andy Biggs, Joe Arpaio, J.D. Hayworth and Russell Pearce – have made it impossible for me to keep faith in the party.

Quite frankly, I’m amazed that some of these people can dress themselves in the morning.

That is not to say that all of Arizona’s conservatives are dim bulbs, though. Some, men like Arpaio and Pearce, are quite cunning, dangerously cunning, in fact.

I won’t bother with Arpaio, who is – simply put – a horror of a human being.

But I will make note of Pearce, who has emerged as the “leading” Arizona conservative.
Pearce is plenty smart, I suspect. But he is also a mean-spirited demigod, a man whose approach to any problem seems to be “How can I make it worse?” and “What can I do to enflame passions?”

His pet law, Senate Bill 1070, is a masterwork of misguided meanness. It achieves nothing of value. Like the bill’s sponsor, 1070 is all sound and fury. On the other hand, the costs of the new law in terms of its potential impact on the state’s reputation and economy are beyond calculation.

You know it’s a turkey of a law when the best defense that can be made for it is that the law is so inane, so dishonorable that it will force the federal government to act.

That defense reminds me of something that happened when I was a teen. My mom decided I could help ease her burden by getting supper started during the summer months. I was not in favor of this idea, so I developed my own strategy for dealing with this new duty.

When mom came home, every pot, pan, dish and receptacle we owned was stacked up in the sink and the food just short of inedible.

Mom reconsidered. Maybe “my help” in the kitchen wasn’t required, after all.
Similarly, 1070 is so bad that it may force the federal government to step in with a solution that rational humans can tolerate. Don’t assume that this was what Pearce intended, of course. The man is so blinded by malice that he sees 1070 as a wonderful thing. God help him.

In the meantime, Pearce and what passes for the conservative Arizona Republican Party will continue to come up with new, bizarre ways to pull wings off butterflies.

I do not know what outrage these folks will perpetrate next, but I’m sure it will be something pointless and polarizing. And I am sure that Jan “I’d Rather Be Governor Than Right” Brewer will rubber-stamp it.

Whatever it is, they’ll have to do it without my approval.
I’m an Independent now. Eventually, I may even find someone I can vote for.

Slim Smith is a freelance writer who lives in Tempe. You can reach him via email at slim215980@hotmail.com.