You might not have noticed, but shortly after Christmas, Mayor Eric Johnson had a friendly interview published with the conservative magazine National Review. It was a kind of deeper consideration of why he joined the Republican Party.
Johnson offered some valid insights on his view that the Democratic Party no longer represents the values he holds, from public safety to personal responsibility to the possibility individuals have of achieving the American dream if they work hard and take advantage of opportunity.
It revisited Johnson’s pushback, correct in our view, against the “defund the police” movement that swept through the country after the murder of George Floyd. Johnson rightly refused to join that chorus, and his effort to ensure that public safety spending was not cut in Dallas has helped us reverse an upward trend on violent crime.
It’s worth noting, too, that even as activists in the streets and protesters at Johnson’s home demanded City Hall cut police spending, well-respected and long established pastors in South Dallas stood on the lawn of True Lee Baptist Church and said that their neighborhoods needed more, not less, police attention.
In the article, Johnson pushed back against what he sees as the exploitation of identity politics and said, again correctly, that cities across the country could benefit from a serious political challenge to the hegemony of Democratic governance.
But here’s where the praise ends and the concern begins. The mayor still has some explaining to do, and the chummy setting of a National Review interview didn’t go far enough in helping us understand his politics.
We no longer live in a country where saying you’re a conservative or a Republican has a single meaning. The dominant meaning now, in fact, is not the law-and-order, small government, personal responsibility Republicanism of the Reagan era. No, rising as a Republican now means embracing the isolationist, nativist and often downright ugly messaging of the MAGA-era GOP.
Johnson avers in the article that “there is some baggage associated with the national Republican brand.” He doesn’t name the baggage. We might all be interested to know what he thinks that is.
Johnson also cites as a reason for leaving the Democrats the fact that party leaders still supported his onetime rival Terri Hodge when Johnson ran for the Legislature, despite clear evidence of Hodge being corrupt. A statewide political party ignoring corruption in its ranks? There is pretty strong public evidence against the Republican attorney general, but that too goes unmentioned in National Review.
The question Johnson should answer, outside of the sinecure of friendly media, is exactly what sort of Republican he is. The time of just calling yourself conservative and expecting that has a single meaning is over.
Dallas deserves a deeper answer.
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