GOP needs to return to moderate roots

We’ve hit bottom.

My Republican Party — the one I proudly joined in 1951, which supported fiscal restraint, a prudent economy and limited government while championing liberalism for human issues — stands on the precipice of powerlessness and therefore uselessness in Hawaii. It’s down to five legislators statewide.

Why? Because after decades of ultra-conservative Republican leaders’ disdain for its promising, moderate GOP colleagues, moderates rejected the party’s dysfunction and right-wing extremism. They saw the light and it wasn’t in the fire-and-brimstone Republican Party. Among my party’s losses since the late ‘80s are:

>> Rep. Aaron Ling Johanson

>> Sen. Gil Riviere

>> Sen. Mike Gabbard

>> Rep. Karen Awana

>> Rep. Jimmy Tokioka

>> Sen. Donna Ikeda

>> Sen. D.G. Anderson

>> Sen. Ann Kobayashi

>> Sen. Virginia Isbell

>> House Minority Leader Beth Fukumoto — voted out this year by rightist Republican Reps. Gene Ward, Bob McDermott and Andria Tupola while Rep. Lauren Matsumoto declined to vote.

Fukumoto was punished by those current representatives for participating in the Women’s March for human equality. Their tiny alliance ousted her 11 days later. She refused to cower and stifle criticisms of President Donald Trump, and the hard-right wing essentially muzzled her.

How did the GOP that once inspired millions fall so hard? Locally, the downfall began after then-Southern Baptist minister Pat Robertson led religious extremists to populate the party in 1988. Since then, his flock and the flock-like have converted it into an unholy mutation that shuns equality, social justice, tolerance, fairness, unity, peace above war, goodwill and open-mindedness.

A 1992 Robertson quote speaks volumes about the party’s spiral: Feminism “encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians,” he said.

Contrast that to two-term Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s wisdom: “In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people’s money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative.”

So went the mass exodus from the Hawaii GOP.

But I’m staying in the party that I joined six decades ago, fighting to rebuild the moderate GOP, which has proven to be its best version for helping citizens. Its fiscal and social-justice achievements during Eisenhower’s era include:

>> Sponsoring and signing the first post-Reconstruction Civil Rights Bill;

>> Keeping America at peace through major Cold War crises every year in office: Korea, Vietnam, Formosa, Suez, Hungary, Berlin and the U-2;

>> Ending the Korean War;

>> Sponsoring the Refugee Relief Act to provide asylum for thousands of post-war refugees, expellees and displaced persons;

>> Balancing the budget three times and refusing to raise defense spending after inheriting a $9 billion deficit and a fragile economy; citizens prospered under Eisenhower’s fiscal policies;

>> Fighting for equal pay for equal work regardless of gender;

>> Extending Social Security to 10 million more workers and benefits increases for 6.5 million Americans;

>> Paving the way for America’s interstate highway system through the Federal Aid Highway Act;

>> Raising the minimum wage for more than 2 million workers and urging the extension of minimum-wage protections to as many workers as possible;

>> Bringing unemployment insurance to 4 million additional workers and supporting improvements to the unemployment insurance system;

>> Supporting NATO and committing to a vital role in global affairs, mutual security systems and peacekeeping;

>> Adhering to his core philosophy of “gently in manner, strong in deed” to forge relationships and alliances with leaders.

We have an unrecognizable GOP in Hawaii. Let’s restore Republicanism as it should be.

State Rep. Cynthia Thielen represents House District 50 (Kailua, Kaneohe).