The Reluctant Republican

The 2012 presidential election demonstrated once again that Florida may be the most purple state in the Union. Northwest Florida, however, remains staunchly Republican.

Barbara Olschner believes in her party’s founding principles: lower taxes, less regulation, limited government, and individual accountability. But she also believes in governing through compromise, respectfully listening to opponents’ viewpoints, and the possibility that a Republican can be fiscally but not socially conservative.

In 2010, Olschner ran for Congress as a moderate Republican in the Florida Panhandle. Her opponents were an undertaker, a drug salesman, a Delta pilot, and a cowboy inventor who described himself as a cross between John Wayne and Ronald Reagan. Olschner, a courtroom lawyer with over twenty-six years of litigation experience, was labeled “the Professor” and deemed “too smart to go to Congress.” In hindsight, it isn’t surprising that while running for Congress at the height of the Tea Party’s influence, she was branded an elitist and a RINO (Republican in Name Only)—and finished dead last.

The Reluctant Republican traces Olschner’s campaign and her realization that the current leadership of her party demands strict adherence to its ideology. Not only are different viewpoints not tolerated, but those who espouse them are vilified for their disloyalty.

This isn’t a story about losing an election. It’s an enlightening look at the state of American politics. What occurred in the Florida Panhandle reflects national trends in America’s Grand Old Party. Founded on principles of increasing individual freedoms, the Republican Party has morphed into one that marginalizes personal freedom, and demands allegiance to a strict conservative agenda. Adherents of this ultra-right shift allow for no compromise or moderation and neither respect nor acknowledge anyone who disagrees with their doctrine.

Olschner is reluctant to remain in the Republican party but more reluctant to leave. She refuses to accept the current dogma but also refuses to abandon her conservatism. Her fight for civility and her refusal to kowtow to the lowest common denominator reveal much about what passes for politics in the Sunshine State—and in America.