Pressed up against the big shoulders of Chicago is a suburban county that has been governed by Republicans since sometime after Noah’s Flood.  While the state of Illinois, which hasn’t seen full Republican leadership since the 1950’s, struggles with the second-worst credit rating in the nation, DuPage sits on a Aaa, shared by only 2% of the nation’s counties.  While Chicago, Cook County, and the state struggle to shed a legacy of entrenched official corruption, DuPage County leadership rarely sees the FBI.

The generations of Republican leadership here have produced sound fiscal responsibility and remarkably capable day-to-day administration.  DuPage County is a living example of what pragmatic Republican governance can accomplish.

You might imagine that this picture of “sound fiscal responsibility” in Republican hands means spartan public services consistently sacrificed in the interests of low taxes.  This is not Texas.

My home is in a leafy suburb, yet we only keep one car. The train is an easy walk from here, even in the winter.  The same goes for the grocery store, movie theater, pool, parks, and shops.  The kids walk to school. Our Republican Congressmen are not using their influence to block federal funding for local rail transit.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

Public capital is abundant and well-maintained.  There is a park within walking distance nearly everywhere and the Illinois Prairie Path sustains 62 miles of beautiful hike and bike trails in a unique public-private partnership.  The county is dotted with a matrix of local museums, nature centers and public pools.  For someone who grew up fishing at Lake Rayburn, it’s a slightly disorienting experience to help your kid land a perch in the shadow of an office tower, but it’s still nice.  Plus, it’s close to home and inexpensive.

The county offers some of the best public schools in the country as well as a dense network of public-funded community colleges and continuing education programs that reach deep into our communities.  The local parks districts in addition to their other duties maintain gyms and other athletic facilities at reduced rates.  Great places for kids’ sports, yoga classes, etc.

After a lifetime in the South, the libraries here seem like something out of a science-fiction movie.  I don’t know how to begin to describe these book-palaces which make some major university libraries look like warehouses.  Since they’re tied into a network of greater-Chicago area institutions, you can get almost anything, quickly, and order it online.  If none of the metro libraries stock a certain book you’re looking for (very rare), send an email and they’ll find it.  You can drive through and pick it up in a couple of weeks.

Thanks to the professionalism and investment that goes into these institutions, the library sits at the center of many communities here, a hangout for kids and adults, especially in the winter.  My family has 8-10 books checked out at any given moment.

Republicans here are not balancing the budget by running some Libertarian experiment in zero-public-capital government.  They are making prudent choices about how best to use available resources and that even means occasionally raising taxes or issuing bonds.

So, taxes must be sky-high, right?  That was perhaps the biggest surprise of all.  When I moved from Houston to suburban Chicago eight years ago my overall tax bill dropped significantly because Illinois funds a portion of its public services through a novel mechanism  – they call it an “income tax.”

In Texas I was squarely in the bull’s-eye of the state’s regressive tax system – young, middle income, and a relatively new home-owner.   Texas’s spectacular property and sales taxes hit hard early in a career.  It’s no wonder Texans feel they are being taxed to death in spite of enjoying federal tax rates at historic lows.

Many years later I now pay more in taxes here than I would in Texas, but that’s because my income has grown. I’m entirely okay with that.  Paying more now that I have more makes obvious sense.

Republicans here cling to strong traditional values, but by some miracle that leaves room for them to support families through meaningful public services.  Party meetings here do not open with a prayer, which I initially thought was an oversight.  Many of these folks will eat their chicken sandwich with pride, but I’ve yet to personally hear a conspiracy theory, a gay slur, Birther nonsense, or some goofball smear expressed at a party meeting.

And a strange wonder lurks around the margins.  Here in this Republican Jurassic Park I have once or twice spotted a liberal Republican [republicanus obscuris].  Younger readers might not realize that such an awkward creature once existed in the wild.  We still have a few people here who combine traditional conservative positions on fiscal matters with a passionate respect for labor unions, concern for the immigrants and the poor, belief in a woman’s untrammeled right to an abortion, and enthusiasm for environmental protection.  They are rare and odd, but as real as the platypus.

Here on the Lost Island of Rational Republicans, life is pretty good.  Obama was the first Democrat to carry this county at any time in modern history (I can’t find any other time that happened and I researched it back to the ‘30’s).  He won by more than ten points and he will probably carry the county this fall.  In fact, given conditions at the national level, one wonders when a Republican Presidential candidate will be competitive here again.  However, the local Republican leadership remains quite popular.

They deliver a practical, valuable suite of public services with efficiency and transparency.  They have steered the county clear of the union-patronage and corruption that cripples so many Democratic local governments.  Republicans in this remarkable place deliver solid representation without drama, hyperbole, or theatrics.  They serve their constituents and they win.

These folks deserve a chance to lead Illinois and in a better world they would be the model for the national Republican Party.  I’ll be supporting them this fall as always.

Republicans who question the most belligerent or outrageous statements from the party’s fringes will quickly find themselves branded a RINO, a “Republican in Name Only.” The accusation has become so pervasive that is begs the question – what is an authentic Republican?

In this confused climate, it may be impossible to understand what a Republican is without looking back at what a Republican was. Only by tracing our path to this point can we find our way back toward relevance.

Officially the Republican Party was formed in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854, but that date more accurately marks a rebranding than a birth. Antebellum Republicans were a coalition formed by anti-slavery members of the recently collapsed Whig Party. Through the Whigs (and the Federalists before them), Republicans have a heritage that goes back to birth of the Republic and the influence of Alexander Hamilton.

From the beginning Republicans were the party of commerce. Democrats, through leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson built a core among farmers and laborers. Republicans, through Hamilton, were the party of townsfolk, business people, and capitalists.

In the long period between the Civil War and the Cold War neither party had an overriding ideological alignment. Republicans endorsed Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Conservatives like Herbert Hoover. Democrats harbored labor socialists like Eugene Debs and religious conservatives like William Jennings Bryant.

The ideological confusion that muddles modern Republican politics has roots in a decision made by President Truman in 1948 that scrambled the poles of political alignment. Moved by appalling incidents of unpunished violence against black veterans returning from World War II, Truman took the only action he felt was open to him at the time. Through an executive order, he ended racial segregation in the military.

Southern Democrats were furious at this threat to their values. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond broke from the Democrats and staged a third-party challenge to Truman.

In his Presidential campaign, Thurmond sought to recast Southern white supremacist ideology to make it palatable for a national audience. Thurmond’s 1948 speech accepting the nomination of the States’ Rights Democrats (“Dixicrats”) laid out an ideological opposition to desegregation that still resonates in far-right rhetoric.

Since the earliest days of the Republic, Southern conservatives had been violently opposed to Industrialization. They were the country’s most powerful opponents of Capitalism and as such, were staunchly anti-Republican. The emergence of the Soviet threat offered an opportunity for a new alignment between Southern conservatives and the GOP that would have been previously impossible.

Thurmond outlined a case against desegregation that was technically independent of racism. In a beautifully contorted appeal, Thurmond positioned Southern segregationists as the nation’s truest patriots, protecting liberty from Communists in our own Federal government. Thurmond was exploiting a narrow opening, created by the Soviet threat, for Southern Conservatives to align with Hamiltonian Republicans on the basis of their common opposition to Marxism.

Thurmond’s political formula subsumed white supremacist rhetoric beneath religious and nationalist themes to which Republicans were generally friendly. His campaign failed, but the manner in which he cloaked the Southern defense of white supremacy in Cold War rhetoric would change our politics.

Republicans, as the party of Marx’s “bourgeoisie” were anti-Communist to the core. As Southern Conservatives grew alienated by the nation’s growing hostility to their values, they needed a new political outlet. They found that outlet in the nearly empty Southern GOP.

Grassroots Republican political infrastructure was virtually non-existent in the South before the ‘80’s. Taking advantage of that vacuum, Southern conservatives built the rough equivalent of a Neo-Confederate third-party beneath the national Republican brand. As the success of the Civil Rights Movement accelerated the white flight from the Democratic Party, Southern conservatives began to alter the political balance inside the GOP at the national level.

In 1964, South Carolina Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond joined the Republican Party. In 1989, Texas Democratic State Representative Rick Perry joined the Republican Party. Those two events could be considered the bookends that define the GOP’s pivot away from its commercial, Hamiltonian roots. This seismic shift was made possible by aligning Southern segregationists with political conservatives and religious fundamentalists elsewhere in the country. This influx changed the balance of power among Republican liberals, moderates, progressives and conservatives all over the country.

Between the ’64 and ’88 conventions, the new alignment sent the party careening rightward and Southward. By ’92 Republicans were beginning to lose in their historic strongholds in northern urban areas while building new support in Dixie.

As long as there was a Communist threat it remained possible to hold together this awkward alignment. Without the unifying force of the Soviet threat, there is nothing left to mask the racism that has glued the current coalition together since 1964.

The tensions that pit racial conservatives against the party’s traditional commercial interests are now hopelessly exposed. As Southern conservatives recruited over the past generation perceive a historic opportunity to cripple the Federal government, grounds for cooperation with Hamiltonian Republicans are becoming harder to find. Everyone is waking up to the absurdity of this alliance.

So, what is a Republican? Too often it is someone willing to let every political position be vetted and shaped by a small but powerful core of religious extremists and latent racists. The better question is what was a Republican and how can the party’s pragmatic majority restore their former influence?

Republicans were the traders, innovators, investors, and industrialists who built our urban landscapes and brought us our modern economy. Republicans were Progressives, Conservatives and Moderates united by their faith in the power of well-maintained markets to fuel prosperity, innovation, and freedom. Republicans understood that, for better or worse, business is the engine that powers everything else we value.

The Republican Party was not so much about less government or more government. The Republican Party was about making things work. Republicans were the sober, prudent voice in every debate. Those values still represent a majority in the country, more than strong enough to regain control of the GOP.

Restoring the party’s credibility will be easier than most people think, but it will require a few individuals to step out of line and risk precious political capital that they have accumulated over decades. Once a few people find the courage to break from the party’s recent history the tide may turn. Until then, what Republicans are will continue to be something less proud and promising than what Republicans were.