Port: Maybe a 'uniparty' isn't such a bad idea

MINOT — Listen to a MAGA Republican like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene talk long enough, and you'll probably hear them sneer about the "uniparty."

This is a pejorative intended to suggest that the traditionally conservative Republicans the MAGA populists are trying to drive out of every level of politics are no different than the Democrats.

It's happening at the national level, and it's happening here in North Dakota, where self-aggrandizing provocateurs like U.S. House candidate Rick Becker and Bismarck-area state Rep. Brandon Prichard expend most of their energy fighting over Republicans.

In Washington, D.C., Rep. Moscow Marge plans to force a vote on a motion to vacate the speaker's chair next week. She says she wants every member of the House to be on the record. Note that this is not an attack on Democrats.

None of them will be put at risk in the upcoming election by voting to keep Speaker Mike Johnson in charge of the House.

This is all about Republicans. Comrade Greene says she is "eradicating" MAGA skeptics from the GOP.

There is an element of "uniparty" in the bulwark a majority of House members have built against Greene's shenanigans. Democrats have been explicit in their announcement that they'll oppose Greene and back Johnson. Greene and her ilk see it as apostasy that Republicans would accept help from the left.

It seems like the sort of "uniparty" I could get behind.

I don't want governance by progressives and liberals. I want traditional conservatism from our leadership, but ideological niceties seem like a luxury right now. So, yes, sign me up for a "uniparty" of Democrats and traditional Republicans in opposition to the extremism coming from the left and the right.

Sign me up for a "uniparty" that doesn't believe the Jan. 6 rioters were "unbelievable patriots," as Donald Trump has described them.

A uniparty that doesn't side with Hamas, as many of the left-wing demonstrators on our nation's campuses do. One that doesn't fetishize foreign authoritarians like Hungary's Viktor Orban, who addressed CPAC last year, or Vladimir Putin, whose victory in Ukraine seems to be a priority for MAGA Republicans.

I want a uniparty of Democrats and Republicans (and every other flavor of American politics) that can disagree with one another, at times forcefully, without seeing the other side as villains.

I want a uniparty that cares more about making sound policies than getting booked on cable news shows.

I want a uniparty that can win with grace and lose with dignity (and without immediately concluding that the other side must have cheated).

I want a uniparty that is built around truth, not one that embraces lies about vaccines and stolen elections.

The MAGA crowd spits "uniparty" and imagines a conspiracy of people marching in lock-step toward some unseemly goal. But what if it was just leaders who don't want to be in the entertainment business? Who wants to make politics boring again? Who are in office to lead and organize themselves around serving the American people and the American republic so that all of us, despite our profound differences, can live together peacefully?

That doesn't seem so bad, does it?