JOHN BRUMMETT: Split the difference

Conner Eldridge, 38 and a Davidson College graduate who is maybe a smidgen on the preppy side, visited with me for more than an hour Monday afternoon.

He made a case that he is different from John Boozman, who isn't preppy even a smidgen.

Let's get right to the asserted differences that Eldridge cited in an effort to persuade me--and the leftward base of what remains of the state Democratic Party--that his Democratic opposition to Boozman's re-election to the U.S. Senate amounts to an actual challenge, a choice, not a superfluity or pointless replica.

First, Eldridge would not vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That, he said, is because Obamacare spawned the successful private-option form of Medicaid expansion in Arkansas. Notably, Eldridge insisted on referring to the private option, not the Affordable Care Act.

Second, his position is "live and let live" on social policy. He said we need to put our government focus on the economy and foreign policy and leave people alone on their personal lives. That means, he said, that he opposes any form of discrimination, employment or otherwise, including against persons on account of sexual orientation. That's different from Boozman.

Third, he supports the federal hate-crimes law--which Boozman voted against--and used it as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas to prosecute primitive brutes in North Arkansas who brought harm to Hispanics simply because they passed through town looking different.

Fourth, he personally opposes abortion, but doesn't oppose it in a governmental sense, meaning he supports Roe v. Wade to the extent that it provides choice to women in the early stage of pregnancy. That's also different from the Republican incumbent.

Fifth, he supports immigration reform that establishes a path to legal status but not citizenship--and, of course, secures the border. Boozman voted against immigration reform providing such a path.

I brought up Eldridge's previously quoted unwillingness to take a position on Planned Parenthood funding. As he answered, he said he suspected he'd make both sides mad. I suspect he's right.

He said the Planned Parenthood videos are "grotesque," but that he'd never vote to defund Planned Parenthood unless assured of a clear and full replacement to provide reproductive health services to poor women.

Then there was Eldridge's statement last week calling President Barack Obama's foreign policy a failure, and for an act of war against ISIS, though not one with American ground troops, and for a suspension of any Syrian refugee program.

I asked him what was wrong, exactly, with the existing many-faceted and two-year vetting program now in place for refugees from war-torn Syria. He never answered. He simply said mistakes can happen in vetting, and that, while there are no guarantees, it seemed advisable to take a "pause" to consider whether there is any way to improve the process to "redouble" our security efforts.

He said he would not "walk back" his refugee statement of last week. But he said he absolutely would not support repealing altogether our acceptance of Syrian refugees.

I remarked that it must be exhausting to slice issues as finely as Eldridge seeks to slice them in performing what I've called a cultural relic in the failed and passé center-right Arkansas Democratic style of Mark Pryor or Mike Ross.

By that I meant the style of a Democrat trying to steer clear of national Democratic liberalism while being centrist enough to hold the Democratic base and conservative enough not to concede white rural conservative appeal to Republicans.

Eldridge said it wasn't exhausting at all, but logical.

"I'm old school meets new school," he said.

By "old school," he explained, he means that he seeks to follow the rural Arkansas Democratic tradition of a personal political connection, which includes conservative values.

By "new school," he explained, he means that people are sicker than ever of politics as usual and will be receptive to a candidate who rejects the party-line vote of Boozman, and the party-line vote of his own affiliation, and offers "intellectual honesty" and "problem-solving."

Owing to the super-majority and deliberative culture of the U.S. Senate, a senator in the philosophical middle working hard to solve problems can actually write legislation and make a difference, Eldridge said.

He was right.

So let me tell you who always said the same thing. And it was someone who actually did hard work in the middle and sometimes made a difference.

That would be Mark Pryor, drubbed for re-election a few months ago by a Republican extremist who now causes rather than solves problems.

So I wish Conner Eldridge luck as he seeks to step left and step right without pulling a muscle or splitting his britches.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 11/26/2015

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