Saluting Them As They Go

On the departure of Don Bacon and other conservatives from Congress

Brigadier General Donald Bacon, 55th Wing commander, salutes the men and women attending his final flight at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. (Photo by Josh Plueger)

In discussions of politics, we spend a lot of time arguing about definitions: “What does this word mean? What does that word mean?” Ideas are more important than words. More important than specific, malleable terms. Still, words are often worth fighting for.

(“Fighting words” is a term you are familiar with. Actually, that term is better rendered “fightin’ words.”)

Over an article from Politico, a headline reads, “Key GOP centrist Rep. Don Bacon will not seek reelection.” Is that what Bacon is, a centrist? I think of him as a conservative. But, these days, if you are a conservative and not someone of a Trump-Orbán stripe, you’re apt to get the label “centrist.”

In 2013, I wrote a piece called “The E-Word: Thoughts on the use and abuse of ‘establishment.’” I said,

The current poster boy for establishment Republicanism is Mitch McConnell—one of the smartest, ablest, most valuable conservatives in America. He has performed any number of services (such as standing athwart unconstitutional, or unwise, limits on campaign finance). We’re lucky to have him in politics. But now he wears a scarlet E.

McConnell sent me a note, saying, “As someone who has spent most of his career being decried as a right-wing lunatic, it’s been something of an out-of-body experience to be condemned in some quarters as an establishment moderate.”

A week ago, someone described me as a “reasonable conservative.” Oh, the ignominy! For years, critics on the left damned me as an extreme right-winger. (A famous writer called me “a shill for the extreme Right.”) And now I am tagged with the scarlet R, for “reasonable”?

I recall something my friend and colleague Mike Potemra said. We had lived across the hall from each other in a dorm. This was in 1985. Mike later quipped, “Jay and I were known as right-wingers because, in the dispute between Reagan and Qaddafi, we took Reagan’s side.”

As I think about it, I first became aware of Don Bacon in 2023—in other words, not very long ago at all. This was the story:

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said Thursday his wife slept with a loaded gun after receiving more threatening phone calls from voters who were angry that he voted against Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) Speakership bid.

(I have quoted an article from The Hill.)

In the ensuing two years, I have noticed Bacon a lot, and cited him a lot. A couple of months ago, I wrote an essay about patriotism (always a contentious subject). Here is a paragraph:

On his first day in office, this time around, Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” This was capricious, Caesaristic. The Gulf of Mexico has been called the “Gulf of Mexico” for some 500 years.

Another paragraph:

On February 9, Trump proclaimed “the first ever Gulf of America Day.” On May 8, the U.S. House passed a bill codifying “Gulf of America.” Its sponsor was Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican. Only one Republican voted against the bill: Don Bacon of Nebraska. “It just seems juvenile,” he said. “We’re the United States of America. We’re not Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany or Napoleon’s France. We’re better than this. It just sounds like a sophomore thing to do.”

I will miss having such a man in Congress—that lone Republican.

I have especially appreciated Bacon’s stance on Ukraine: He is for the Ukrainians, against Putin. He recognizes the stakes in the Ukraine war. He knows what Putin is, having no illusions whatsoever. He has a solid sense of the American interest.

Have I set the bar too low? Is this a little like favoring Reagan over Qaddafi? Maybe. But how many Republicans, in politics or the media, can clear the bar I have set?

Three months ago, Congressman Bacon published an op-ed piece titled “My Fellow Republicans and President Trump, We Must Stand Up to Putin.” Regularly, he has issued tweets such as this one:

Putin’s Russia keeps bombing cities and murdering citizens. It is their strategy to wear down Ukraine. We shouldn’t agree to reward these war crimes with any Ukraine territory.

(Find that statement here.)

Upon taking office, the second time, President Trump moved to shut down the U.S. radios: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Radio Free Asia; the Voice of America; etc. (For a piece by me on this subject—“Radios and Lifelines”—go here.) Very few Republicans objected. Objecting, of course, was Bacon.

On X, he wrote,

Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty play important roles in getting America’s story to the rest of the world. We stand for freedom, free markets and rule of law. We want to promote our values.

One prominent journalist—Glenn Greenwald, who is either on the left or on the right, depending on your sense of direction—told Bacon to “focus on the US and mind your own business.”

The congressman responded,

Freedom is my business. Closed countries fear the truth. Chinese need to know the crimes against humanity their government is perpetrating on the Uyghurs. Russians should know Putin has caused 800,000 Russian casualties in Ukraine. Information is a weapon.

As I see it, Don Bacon is a throwback of a Republican, a pre-2016 Republican, an heir of Reagan and the Reaganites. They (we) are a dwindling band. I think of an Agatha Christie title: “And Then There Were None.”

Some of my friends are cross at Bacon for leaving Congress—for leaving the field. I can understand. One by one they go. They are either crushed by Republican voters, as Liz Cheney was, or they leave before it can happen. (Mitt Romney?)

Mike Gallagher was 39 when he left Congress; Anthony Gonzalez, 38. They might have been Republican “stars,” for decades. They might have been presidential or vice-presidential nominees. Why did they leave? Well, we can say this: Threats of violence to themselves and their families were no incentive to stay.

In Congress or out, I hope conservatives will stay in the game—the “arena,” broadly defined—somehow. The world hath need of them.