To Rat and Re-Rat

This Re-Rat post first appeared in 2009. In updat­ing it, very few politi­cians have qual­i­fied since Sen­a­tor Judd Gregg and the late Sen­a­tor Arlen Specter (both of whom I admired).

In 2009, I proud­ly pre­sent­ed the Churchill Re-Rat Award (issued infre­quent­ly) to Sen­a­tor Judd Gregg (R.-NH). Judd had accept­ed nom­i­na­tion as Pres­i­dent Obama’s Sec­re­tary of Com­merce. Then he with­drew, say­ing he could not bal­ance “being in the Cab­i­net ver­sus myself as an indi­vid­ual doing my job.”

Gregg’s nom­i­na­tion had sewn fear among con­ser­v­a­tives. If he left the Sen­ate, NH’s then-Demo­c­rat Gov­er­nor, John Lynch, would appoint a Demo­c­rat or lib­er­al Repub­li­can in his place.

Art of the Re-Rat

“To rat” is a once-com­mon Par­lia­men­tary prac­tice. Once, told that a Con­ser­v­a­tive MP was rat­ting to join the Lib­er­al Par­ty, Churchill exclaimed: “That’s the only instance of a rat swim­ming toward a sink­ing ship.”

On 26 Jan­u­ary 1941 Churchill—who had desert­ed the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty for the Lib­er­als in 1904 but oozed back into the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty in 1925 (after being appoint­ed Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer the pre­vi­ous year by Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Stan­ley Bald­win)—remarked to his pri­vate sec­re­tary John Colville: “Any­one can rat, but it takes a cer­tain amount of inge­nu­ity to re-rat.”  He was pre­scient. Re-rat­ting is a lost art nowadays.

But not com­plete­ly! Just a few weeks after Gregg, Sen­a­tor Arlen Specter (D.-Pa.) re-rat­ted when he switched from the Repub­li­cans to the Democ­rats. A reg­is­tered Demo­c­rat, Specter had been Philadel­phia Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney under Dis­trict Attor­ney James Crum­lish, but in 1965 he ran and beat Crum­lish. Specter sub­se­quent­ly rat­ted by chang­ing his reg­is­tra­tion to Repub­li­can. In 2009 he re-rat­ted to the Democrats.

Flying Fickle Finger of Fate

I must now com­mis­sion two copies of the Churchill Re-Rat Award, whose design I am pon­der­ing. It might well take the shape of the “Fly­ing Fick­le Fin­ger of Fate,” for­mer­ly dis­pensed by the Rowan and Mar­tin TV show “Laugh-In.”

One hopes that the fine art of the Re-Rat will wit­ness a revival. Every politi­cian who is think­ing that he or she no longer agrees with the par­ty should rat, or re-rat. Tul­si Gab­bard has recent­ly half-rat­ted, but has not so far com­plet­ed the process. To do that she would have need­ed to be nom­i­nat­ed for Vice-Pres­i­dent. (Regret­tably IMHO.) But she does not seem like­ly to re-rat.

Re-rat now!

This Churchill prac­tice might pro­duce a his­toric realign­ment of the par­ties. Per­haps even new Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties, which will bet­ter define the two very oppo­site philoso­phies and approach­es on issues. Then we can get down to the busi­ness of argu­ing both sides of the debate instead of obfus­cat­ing, dodg­ing and virtue-sig­nal­ing, in order to toe some imag­ined par­ty line.

As Churchill, who always put prin­ci­ple before par­ty, remarked ear­ly on: “The alter­na­tion of par­ties in pow­er, like the rota­tion of crops, has ben­e­fi­cial results.” (House of Com­mons, 25 June 1907.)