This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated December 17, 2021
Former Senator Bob Dole passed away on December 5, at the age of 98. His passing highlights how much politics has changed. His career makes clear how much his party has changed.
Overwhelmingly, I am opposed to Dole’s politics. Some of those philosophical differences had consequential effects on people’s lives. He was opposed to a woman’s right to choose. He voted against creating Medicare. He supported Nixon even after his role in the Watergate coverup was known. He was admittedly “a Trumper.”
However, Dole did things that no elected Republican would do today. Even with his support of Trump, he was clear that Trump lost the 2020 election and said that he is “sort of Trumped out.” These are not the bravest statements to make, but very few current GOP members of Congress will dare say them.
Very unlike Trump in 2020, Dole accepted his 1996 presidential election loss to President Bill Clinton with dignity. Clinton would later award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the two worked together to raise money to construct the World War II memorial on the national mall.
Whereas Trump refused to attend the funerals of Rep. John Lewis, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Rep. John Dingell, Sen. John McCain and former First Lady Barbara Bush over personal grudges, the Clintons attended Dole’s funeral and current Democratic President Joe Biden eulogized him.
In 1983, when President Reagan opposed the bill to create Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Dole co-sponsored it and helped garner enough GOP support to obtain a veto-proof majority that Reagan could not overcome.
“The ADA has been under attack from Dole’s party in recent years. In 2018, the GOP’s ADA Education and Reform Act had provisions that would strip many of the disability requirements businesses must adhere to.”
Several years later, Dole joined an effort led by Democrats to create the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA has been transformative and Dole was crucial in getting it passed. When fellow Republicans resisted it, he objected to their claims it was an entitlement program or some form of welfare. When religious groups and the majority of the business community, most of which were closely aligned with the GOP, opposed it, he pushed back.
Ultimately, the ADA passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Today, even proposals Republicans want passed, cannot do so with bipartisan support. This past week, Senate Republicans agreed to suspend the filibuster so that a vote to raise the debt ceiling could pass with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes usually needed. Republicans did this because they wanted it to pass, but they did not want to actually cast any votes for it alongside Democrats with a Democrat in the White House.
The ADA has been under attack from Dole’s party in recent years. In 2018, the GOP’s ADA Education and Reform Act had provisions that would strip many of the disability requirements businesses must adhere to. Last year, Senate Republicans’ HEALS Act threatened to strip rights from disabled Americans.
Dole was also instrumental in fighting hunger, both here and abroad. He worked with Democrat Sen. George McGovern on the and was the driving force behind the School Breakfast Program. These two programs brought 3.2 million adults and children out of poverty in 2020, but throughout Trump’s term, GOP Senators continually attempted to defund them. Dole also co-sponsored the Food For Education Program to fight against hunger internationally, which has improved literacy in poorer nations, especially for girls, yet today’s GOP would likely cut funding if they took control of Congress and the White House.
Dole also voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and he co-sponsored the Voting Rights Act extension of 1982. Those acts have all been under attack from the GOP the past decade, especially the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013, thanks to the majority of partisan Republican appointees to the bench.
Overwhelmingly, I disagreed with Bob Dole. I would never have voted for him. Yet I can acknowledge positive actions he was behind, typically done in tandem with colleagues from across the aisle, that have been of great importance. Unfortunately, I can also acknowledge that the willingness to work in that way for the good of the country is no longer allowed from the party Bob Dole belonged to.
