In July, Marco Rubio announced a 23-point initiative that would become the slogan for his campaign for U.S. Senate. He called it "Ideas to Reclaim America," and it signaled that Rubio would remain on the far right of the GOP.
He issued a statement that showed he wanted no consensus with the left. "As Americans, we have reached a point in our history when we must decide if we are to continue on the free market, limited government path that has made us exceptional, or if we are prepared to follow the rest of the world down the road of government dependency," Rubio wrote in his statement. "It is
a clear choice between two very different futures, and I believe the
American people are prepared to make the tough, but necessary, choices
to ensure future generations enjoy unrivaled levels of job growth,
freedom, security and prosperity."
The slogan he adopted is
indicative of the unhealthy divide in politics. Both sides have used
"reclaim America" as a call to victory -- a rallying cry that says two
political parties cannot share power. If our side wins, it promises, we
will wrestle away the government and its laws for one political
ideology.
The ugly phrase
appears to have been born here in South Florida. Out of the 19,000
references to "reclaim America" on Google, the first of them refers to
the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ. The Rev. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church
in Fort Lauderdale founded the center in 2000 as a mouthpiece for
Christian conservatives. The center championed a hateful anti-gay and
anti-abortion agenda and held rallies for thousands attended by the likes of
Katherine Harris.
When Kennedy died in 2007, the center died with him. The
slogan he may have invented lived on, and in the era of President
George W. Bush, the far left adopted it.
In January 2008, U.S.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich used the slogan in a
frighteningly creepy TV ad. Titled "Reclaim America," it looked
more like a plug for a cult. A scene in a classroom with a leaky roof
featured a teacher who urged over horror-flick music: "Your country
needs you to make a change."
With
the Democrats back in power, the right has picked up the slogan again.
The Hudson Institute featured a "Reclaim America" conference in January headlined by
John
Bolton. A Facebook group titled Reclaim America promising to
"speak truth to the lies of the Obama agenda" has nearly 17,000 fans.
Churches in Arkansas adopted the "Reclaiming America for Christ" mantra
for a
rally in July that attracted 2,500 attendees.
Then Rubio's
campaign, which didn't return phone calls for this story, jumped on
board, adding it as his campaign slogan and using it to justify a five-day bus tour across Florida. Rubio's message
was picked up by dozens of bloggers and conservative news pundits as a
call to get out the conservative vote November 2.
But none of
those pundits was as divisive as the Heritage Foundation, which
published an editorial shortly after Rubio's announcement. The piece --
titled "Reclaiming America: Why We Honor the Tea Party Movement"
-- urged conservatives to take back the country from "progressive
liberalism." The article ends with this:
"Someday in the future,
some historian will ask some individual, perhaps one of you, 'Why did
you get involved in the Tea Parties? Was it the spending? Was it the
bailouts? Was it health care?' 'No,' they will answer. It was very
simple. We had always governed ourselves, we always intended to govern
ourselves, and those liberals didn't think that we should."
The
Heritage Foundation is right that there are liberals who don't think
Republicans should govern this country. And the article proves that
conservatives also don't want liberals in any office. But if we reject
the argument of "reclaiming America," if we say that we're better off
with representation from both sides, we accept something better -- the
truly American ideal that a consensus government can govern all of us.
Now that's a good way to reclaim America.
