Patriotism Is Not MAGA’s Property

Three Colorado veterans running for Congress are reminding Americans that duty to country comes before loyalty to party.

Note: video for paid subscribers follows article.

For nearly a decade, Donald Trump has treated patriotism as personal loyalty. Support him and you’re a patriot. If you oppose him, you’re a traitor. He wraps himself in the flag and uses the military as a prop. How much you love the country is irrelevant, just as long as you support him.

Three military veterans running for Congress in Colorado represent a very different kind of patriotism. Dwayne Romero, Eileen Laubacher and Jessica Killin are Democrats competing in Republican-held districts. Each spent years in jobs where the oath was to the Constitution. They know the difference between serving a country and serving one man.

Romero is running in Colorado’s sprawling 3rd district against Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd. He grew up poor in South Texas, was raised by a single mother and, by his account, relied on food stamps. He went to West Point, graduated from Ranger School and served seven years as an Army Corps of Engineers officer. During the Persian Gulf War, he was a combat engineer executive officer and earned a Bronze Star. After leaving the Army, he built a business in Colorado and served on the Aspen City Council, the Aspen school board and the Colorado Economic Development Commission. His company now employs about 120 people in his state.

What struck me most about Romero was how he talks about war. Recalling the Gulf War, he emphasized congressional authorization, the international coalition, defined objectives and a plan for bringing troops home. He clearly understands that sending Americans into combat creates obligations for political leaders.

His concern for constitutional responsibility explains why he’s running. “I believe there’s a palpable sense that the Constitution is under threat,” he told Axios.

Romero learned that lesson in combat. Eileen Laubacher learned it in the Navy and at the highest levels of national security. Laubacher, who is challenging Lauren Boebert in the 4th district, spent 34 years in the Navy. She entered the Naval Academy in 1986 (she was in only the 11th class that admitted women) and was commissioned in 1990. She became an intelligence officer, served in Afghanistan in 2009 and eventually rose to rear admiral. She later served as the senior U.S. defense official and defense attaché in India, then as the National Security Council’s senior director for South Asia. When she deployed to Afghanistan, she had five children, whose ages ranged from 10 to one.

Laubacher was a Republican for years. She left the party because she believed its leader was attacking the institutions she served for decades. She says she first took the oath to support and defend the Constitution at 17 and now feels “called, compelled” to run after watching those institutions come under assault.

Jessica Killin offers a different profile: an Army veteran who later became a lawyer and worked closely with military families. She is running in the Colorado Springs-based 5th district against Rep. Jeff Crank. The district contains five military installations and more than 100,000 veterans, yet it has not elected a candidate with military credentials in decades. Killin grew up in Colorado Springs, earned an ROTC scholarship, and served as an Army captain, paratrooper and military police officer. Her overseas work included peacekeeping in the Balkans and supporting NATO’s expansion in Europe. She got a law degree at Georgetown and spent more than a decade at USAA, where she worked on VA home loans and efforts to stop payday lenders from preying on service members. She also served as chief of staff to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Their biographies deserve this much attention because they show what serious preparation for public office looks like. They have made decisions knowing that a mistake could get someone killed. That’s better preparation for Congress than going on television to try to impress Donald Trump.

But military service by itself proves very little. It doesn’t make you automatically wise or fit for office. Just look at Pete Hegseth, who served in uniform. As defense secretary, he has removed experienced generals and admirals and purged officials whose credentials he deemed insufficiently MAGA.

Hegseth also illustrates the difference between military service and militarism. MAGA loves the flags, the flyovers and the tough-guy talk. Military service isn’t so glamorous. It teaches hard lessons, namely that plans fail and allies matter. The people issuing orders owe the people carrying them out honesty, clear objectives and competent leadership.

I learned that in the Air Force, and I learned it again in Congress. The oath taken by military officers is to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” not to serve the personal interests of whoever occupies the Oval Office. The chain of command matters, but it does not place the president above the Constitution.

George Washington established that principle before we had a functioning Constitution. In 1783, unpaid Continental Army officers gathered at their encampment in Newburgh, New York, and considered defying Congress. Washington urged them to remain under civilian control, even though Congress had failed to pay them. As Washington understood, the military couldn’t protect the republic by taking control of it.

That is the promise in these Colorado races. Romero, Laubacher and Killin learned from their service that the Constitution comes before a commander in chief’s whims and vanity. The country comes before your party.

None of this means veterans are automatically entitled to hold office. The last thing we need is a special political class of veterans pretending to know more than everyone else just because they wore a uniform. What we need are more public officials who understand what duty is and how to carry it out. Military service matters in politics only when veterans continue to live by what it taught them.

All three candidates are running in difficult districts. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger, said candidates in races like these need experience “going to tough places and doing tough things.” He meant that the districts will be hard to win. But his words also describe the work of defending democracy when success is uncertain. People have to act before they know whether voters will reward them for it.

Trump does not own patriotism, and MAGA doesn’t own the flag, the military or the word “America.” Those things belong to all of us.

Romero, Laubacher and Killin raised their right hands long ago and took an oath to the Constitution. As someone who has done the same, I can assure you that the oath matters to those who take it. Whether they win or lose, their campaigns show that millions of Americans still recognize that patriotism is about something deeper than wearing a flag pin—and that plenty of Americans are still willing to fight for the real thing.

Video discussion for paid subscribers: (I get more into how the Democrats are, and should be, the true party of patriotism, and some personal reflections as a former Republican)