Another Democratic politician has left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party. Although this doesn’t happen often, it seems to happen more often than a Republican politician leaving the Republican Party and joining the Democratic Party.
John Lee, the mayor of North Las Vegas since 2013, was last elected to office as a Democrat in 2017. On April 6th of this year, he tweeted:
Card-carrying socialists have completely hijacked the Democratic Party here in Nevada. Today on @foxandfriends I announced my decision to switch to the Republican Party – the party of freedom, opportunity, and hope. Join me!
Lee said in an interview earlier this month with “Fox & Friends”:
In the Democratic Party of Nevada, they had an election recently for leadership, and four of the five people were card-carrying members of the Socialist Party.
It’s not the party that I grew up with 25 years ago in this environment, and it’s not the party I can stand with anymore.
The Nevada Republican Party tweeted in support of Lee: “Excited to have Mayor Lee join our party! He shares our values in protecting life, defending the 2nd Amendment, and fighting for working families.”
The Nevada Democratic Party didn’t seem too upset that Lee jumped ship. Judith Whitmer, party chair, “said that Lee hasn’t been aligned with her party, citing his A+ rating with the National Rifle Association, his votes for Donald Trump, and his pro-life position.”
On his website, which includes a link to join the Republican Party, Mayor Lee says:
Nevada needs a switch.
Switch to PEOPLE over ESTABLISHMENT.
Switch to RIGHTS over RHETORIC.
The switch is on! It’s time to turn off the Democratic Socialists and turn on the light of liberty.
In a “Dear Friends” letter on his website, Mayor Lee says about the Democratic Party:
Like President Ronald Reagan and President Donald Trump, I’ve seen firsthand how the Democrat Party has changed—radically, and not for the better. They’ve embraced a socialist, extremist agenda that is not the party of JFK, or of my parents. Their ideas hurt working-class families, restrict freedom and extinguish opportunity for millions of Americans—particularly working-class minorities who deserve the chance to give their families a better life.
Here in Nevada, we’ve seen the full takeover of the Democratic Party by admitted socialists. Their goal is clear—ending the America we know and love, and replacing it with a culture of socialist conformity that erases freedom, opportunity and liberty from the American canvas.
There used to be a place in the Democratic Party for conservative voices like mine. Today, that’s no longer the case. Their party demands a senseless devotion to cancel culture, socialism, and anti-American values I simply do not share.
Mayor Lee defines his “stance” as:
DEFENDING CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
Activist media and bureaucrats have taken our country so far away from our founding principles. I will work for those very principles our nation was founded on—smaller government, lower taxes, free speech, protect unborn life, protect the right to bear arms, and embrace the spirit of liberty that made America so great in the first place.
BATTLING THE SOCIALIST INSURGENCY
Today’s Democratic Party has been taken over by card-carrying socialists. It must be defeated. The very soul of our nation is at stake.
PUTTING NEVADANS FIRST
We The People—that’s who our nation was founded by and for. For too long a corrupt political establishment has corroded our liberties and built a system to empower and enrich insiders and elites. This establishment has been exposed and We The People are poised to take back control.
Although I applaud Mayor Lee’s stance, and am glad that he has left the Democratic Party, I don’t think he realizes that the Republican Party is simply the Red Socialist Party and the Democratic party is simply the Blue Socialist Party. He has merely left Team Blue for Team Red.
Republicans believe in socialized education. Long gone are the days when they called for the elimination of the federal Department of Education. Republicans believe that the government should force some Americans to pay for the education of other Americans and their children.
Republicans believe in socialized medicine. Medicaid and Medicare are nothing less than socialized medicine. Yet, in their platform, the Republicans state: “We intend to save Medicare by modernizing it, empowering its participants, and putting it on a secure financial footing. We will preserve the promise of Medicaid as well by making that program, designed for 1965 medicine, a vehicle for good health in an entirely new era.” Republicans believe that the government should force some Americans to pay for the health care and health insurance of other Americans.
Republicans believe in socialized charity. They have no philosophical objection to the 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing subsidies, utility subsidies, and social services to poor, disabled, and lower-income Americans. And neither do they object to the programs that aren’t means-tested. As long as the welfare state is efficient, has low rates of waste, fraud, and abuse, and doesn’t increase in cost too much every year, then they support it.
Republicans believe in socialized services. For years, they continually funded Amtrak, Planned Parenthood, art and culture, and federal job training. Republicans are the ones who created the TSA to provide security services to airlines. The only objection that Republicans have to President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan is its cost. They are perfectly fine with their own $568 billion infrastructure proposal.
Republicans believe in Social Security. This is the granddaddy of all socialist programs. Yet, in their platform, Republicans state that all options “should be considered to preserve Social Security.”
Mayor Lee, what were you thinking when you changed from Team Blue to Team Red? If you object to the socialism of the Democratic Party, then you should join the Libertarian Party, the Constitution Party, some other non-socialist third party, or simply become an Independent. All you have done is change the color of your shirt.
What matters, of course, is not that you carry the label of Republican, Libertarian, Constitutionalist, or Independent, but whether you stand for the Constitution, federalism, individual liberty, property rights, limited government, free enterprise, and the free market—things that the Republican Party claims to stand for, but doesn’t.
Although he was elected governor of South Carolina in 1946 and U.S. senator from South Carolina in 1954 and 1960 as a Democrat, Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party in 1964 because it was “leading the evolution of our nation to a socialistic dictatorship.” How much more true is that sentiment today.
Every decent American still in the Democratic Party should leave it and let the party be left to the feminists, the environmentalists, the Green New Dealers, the teachers’ unions, the social justice warriors, the pro-abortionists, the welfare statists, the LGBTQ+ community, and the assorted victim groups that the party uses to get votes.
