Column: Artur Davis shows hypocrisy in switching parties

Every time the political pendulum makes a big shift, there are politicians who go over to the other side.

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Davis: Ex-congressman of Alabama.

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Davis: Ex-congressman of Alabama.

DeWayne Wickham USATODAY columnist

Back in the 1960s, after President Johnson signed a series of civil rights laws into effect that ended the Jim Crow era, a legion of Southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party. When the 2008 election gave Democrats control of the White House and veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress, then-Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican, returned to the Democratic Party that he had deserted in 1966.

So, it came as no surprise to me when Artur Davis, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama, announced that he was switching to the GOP. His decision comes as Republicans enjoy a sizable majority in the House and threaten to seize control of the Senate and the Oval Office in November.

Davis' stroll over to the GOP side was a pretty short trip, given the position he has occupied along this nation's ideological spectrum. He was a right-of-center Democrat who, for example, voted against the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court upheld last Thursday.

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Failed race for governor

In his 2010 bid to become Alabama's first black governor, Davis refused to openly court the state's top African-American political organizations and ended up losing the Democratic primary in a landslide to Ron Sparks, the state's agriculture secretary. Sparks, who is white, even won the overwhelmingly black 7th congressional district that Davis represented at the time.

So when Davis — who attended Harvard Law School with Barack Obama and seconded his nomination at the 2008 Democratic convention — announced that he was cutting his ties to the Democratic Party, it was not a surprising move for someone who had rolled the political dice — and lost badly.

But the thing that distinguishes Davis from so many others who have changed party labels is the level of his hypocrisy.

Criticized a colleague

Back in 2009, when Rep. Parker Griffith, D-Ala., defected to the Republican Party, Davis could hardly contain his contempt for his old colleague.

"He leaves a party where differences of opinion are tolerated and respected to join a party that in Washington, marches in lockstep, demands the most rigid unity, and articulates no governing philosophy beyond the forceful use of the word 'no,' " Davis said.

Instead of bolting, Davis said, Griffith should have remained in the Democratic Party, just as Sen. Howell Heflin and Rep. Bud Cramer, two of Alabama's more prominent conservative Democrats, had done. (Heflin retired in 1997, and Cramer stepped down in 2009.)

At the time, Davis said those two Democrats understood that "fiscal conservatism, robust advocacy for our fighting forces, and a defense of our best national values are not partisan principles."

But now, after the folly of his gubernatorial campaign, Davis sees a different political landscape. "Wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities," he said.

Davis talks of resurrecting his political career by moving to Virginia and possibly running as a Republican for the state senate, or competing for one of the Old Dominion's seats in the House.

"If that sounds imprecise, it's a function of how uncertain political opportunities can be," he wrote in a May blog posting.

What it sounds like to me is the double talk of a man who's trying to convince himself that he has made the right decision.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

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