Joseph Sabino Mistick: Our representatives must have room to do right

“We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us.”

That’s what David Ball, chair of Pennsylvania’s Washington County Republican Party, said to KDKA-TV’s Jon Delano about Sen. Pat Toomey after Toomey voted to convict Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol. Ball’s comments made a national splash.

Toomey, who voted 85.5% of time with Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight, is retiring in 2022. He said, “I did what I thought was right and I would certainly like to think that, regardless of my political circumstances or whether I was running for office again or not, I would do the same thing.”

It is an old debate in representative democracies. Edmund Burke, in his famous Speech to the Electors of Bristol County, England, in 1774, made it clear that the wishes of constituents “ought to have great weight.” But when voting on the issues, the representative must follow his judgment and conscience.

“They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment. And he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion,” Burke said.

We know what happens when politicians no longer vote their conscience. In the first half of the 20th century, much of Europe was governed by officials who fell into step and abandoned their values. We don’t need that here.

It is said that a political gaffe is inadvertently telling the truth, but it seems that there was nothing inadvertent about what Ball said about Toomey. Other Republicans who voted for impeachment or conviction have been threatened or censured by Republican Party officials.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted to convict Trump, and she is up for reelection next year. Not one to be bullied, she said, “If I can’t say what I believe that our president should stand for, then why should I ask Alaskans to stand with me?”

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a six-term Illinois congressman, who rarely split with Trump over policy, voted for impeachment and has been censured by his party and publicly shunned by some family members.

Kinzinger told The New York Times, “We have a lot of work to do to restore the Republican Party and to turn the tide on the personality politics.” As for those angry family members, he simply shunned them back.

Not all Republican officials are eager to keep fanning the flames of Trumpism. Right next door to Washington County, Allegheny County Republican Chairman Sam DeMarco is looking ahead.

“We’re a big-tent party. I believe there is room under this tent for people who don’t always agree,” DeMarco said. That doesn’t sound like the Republican Party we know now, but DeMarco is headed in the right direction.

Republicans who demand loyalty to one man miss the point of representative democracy. We delegate the power to make decisions based on values. And if we don’t give our representatives the room to make their best decisions, we all lose.