Hard to believe this guy was considered for Attorney General of the United States in 2008:

Artur Davis, the former Alabama Democratic congressman who recently announced his rebirth as a Virginia Republican, appeared before the Northern Virginia Tea Party on Monday, delivering a speech that referenced Ronald Reagan and Rosa Parks, while congratulating the Tea Party on their success over the past few years.

“I want to submit to you that in the last 100 years, no political organization, in the history of this country, has done more to shape or influence politics as quickly as y’all did.” Davis said. “You know, my kinfolk from the South in the civil rights movement changed the country. But even the civil rights movement did not figure out how to win elections and turn a country around as quickly as you did.”

This is a flawed comparison. The civil rights movement was a social movement that spent decades trying to allow a marginalized group of people to exercise their rights. The Tea Party was an electoral movement dedicated entirely to defeating Democrats, to stymie Barack Obama’s agenda and ability to govern. Both were largely, though not entirely, successful. I’m sure Tea Party supporters would disagree, but they’re just wrong objectively. I suppose the argument that the Tea Party was intended to defend freedom (their conception of it, anyway), but in actuality it was a reaction to the failures of Bush, the election of Obama, and the declining prospects for Republicans electorally. It made few specific complaints, many of which were highly opportunistic (“spending” is unabashed theft and evil, unless those dollars are going to defense contractors or Koch oil ventures as subsidies), was dedicated to militant opposition to every Obama initiative regardless of whether Republicans had supported it earlier, and offers no solutions to the sudden dearth of “freedom” other than voting Democrats (and, to a lesser extent, moderate Republicans) out of office. The Tea Party is, as it has been, a phony social movement, hyped by interested parties with an agenda, legitimized by the mainstream media, and funded by the very same people who funded the Bush Republicans that they now claim to hate. It’s possible to argue that it was a genuine movement that got hijacked by the Kochs, Dick Armey, FOX, and so forth, but it wasn’t that for long.

And this is entirely unsurprising:

During the well-received remarks, Davis argued that “2012 is a 1980 kind of moment.” In 1980, Davis said, “they told us the Europeans and the Asians were the wave of the future. They told us that our young people wouldn’t know times like we did before.” [...]

“Ladies and gentlemen, in 1980, one man, from a small town in Illinois, said I know what they say, I hear the doubts in the wind, but I will not be bowed,” Davis said. “This man, who was supposedly old and faded, issued the same call that a 43-year-old named Jack Kennedy issued in 1960, and said that we can do better.”

…and then Davis voted for Carter. I’m guessing. Maybe he did vote for Reagan and his entire Democratic career was merely convenient, but I doubt it. Republicans are always desperate to find minority faces to put out there so they don’t come across as the old, white party, even if the people elevated are less than qualified (see: West, Allen). Someone with some actual political skills? Woulda been governor for real if he’d been a Republican from the beginning. Does anyone really buy this stuff as anything other than opportunism? And is he suggesting that Mitt Romney is old and faded? He left something dangling there.

All in all, Davis hits all the cliched notes that one would expect him to hit in a stump speech as a Republican. The linking of the party with a civil rights history that it rejected long ago, and that with new voter restrictions it has decided to reject once again. Then there’s the bizarre implication that JFK would be a Republican if he were around today. Why this point keeps recycling around Republican circles I’ll never understand–the substance is that Kennedy cut taxes, but he also tried to create new single-payer health programs and institute civil rights. It definitely feels like something Baby Boomer Republicans circulate to tie into Kennedy’s glamor, which is a little pathetic, as well as to “prove” that Democrats moved to the left since then. It seems pointless to me, since the last thing Kennedy is known for is his policy positions, and his hawkishness nearly destroyed the world. But whatever. And then there’s the Reagan worship, which is so utterly worn out by this point. To be sure, Republicans’ fantasy Reagan has supplanted the real one in the public’s imagination. But ultimately it does Mitt Romney no favors to make the comparison, it just reminds people of how much less smooth and sincere Romney is compared to Ronaldus Magnus, in much the same way the eye-rolling JFK comparisons made John Kerry look like more of a dork in 2004. Republican voters know they don’t have a Reagan on their hands, Art.

I was never all that impressed with Davis when he was a Democrat, because I saw him as slick but empty. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that he’s no different as a Republican. But he takes to it better, ascribing social justice implications to the GOP’s ongoing quest for more power. Typically, party-switchers don’t fare well under these circumstances, but there are exceptions. Like Reagan.