Posted on 02/17/2017 6:33:55 AM PST by rdl6989
WASHINGTON — A former aide says former House Republican leader Bob Michel has died at age 93.
Michel was an affable Illinois congressman who served as leader of the GOP House minority for 14 years. His skill at seeking compromise with the Democrats was critical in helping Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush pursue their agendas during their presidential terms.
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In terms of philosophy, mostly which wing of the party was in ascendency.
RIP Mr. Michel.
Bob Michel was one of those guys who really thought he could work with the other side to get the best possible outcome for the US.
He came to Congress at a time when, though the Dems held power, there could be reasonable compromises made. That changed as the old-school Dems died off or were pushed aside for ones that were more assertive and more agenda-driven.
Michel was not a spineless guy but he wasn’t quite up to the partisan wrangling. Much was made that he was a PINO but if you looked at his voting record back then, he was at least as conservative as stalwarts like Gingrich, Trent Lott or Rob Walker.
Rest in peace, Congressman.
Well liked, bipartisan, sociable and a representative of the permanent Republican minority in the US House. He was a great friend of Dan Rostenkowski.
No sooner had Michel retired than the Republicans gained a majority in the House for the first time in forty years.
Congressman Michel was a World War II veteran. He earned a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars.
RIP, sir.
Newt led the rebellion against Michel. He was everything Newt couldn’t take.
He was the quintessential establishment permanent minority Republican, I believe he toppled Previous GOP Leader John Rhodes from the left, though it may have been more of a “time for a change” thing (DJ?). FR would have been all over him like spray tan on Boehner.
But he was a good man, great American, World War 2 vet and does deserve a lot of credit for getting stuff passed under Reagan. He would have been a hell of a better Speaker than damn Tip O’Niell and wouldn’t have embarrassed the great state of Illinois like Dennis “don’t drop the soap” Hastert did.
RIP
Yeah, Wilson was more conservative than Taft and so was GD WJ Bryan, right?
WRONG.
The democrats have been controlled by socialists on the national level since 1896, long before the New Deal, and prior to being socialists they were largely agrarian proto-socialist, slavery-apologist losers, the US would have remained a backwater if 19th Century Dems had their way. The Federalist/Whig/GOP has always been the better party.
As Impy pointed out, that is an incorrect conclusion regarding the GOP as the “more liberal party” until the New Deal. With the purge of the Bourbons under Cleveland in 1896, the Democrats’ main focus was modern leftism (it’s harder to judge right vs. left in our present understanding prior to the 1890s, which was more economic philosophies as opposed to necessarily social). Obviously, both parties had their left wingers and right for many decades, but the center-right was already the dominant force in the Republicans by 1896.
However, you do have a point regarding an aspect of the Republicans post-1930. Many of the Conservative GOP anti-New Dealers were defeated en masse throughout the period, leaving a small rump of Republicans who were left wing (whereas the Dems, which had huge majorities in the period, still had substantial numbers of center-right members, some of whom were already in office for a time, others defeating Republicans solely because of the unpopularity of the party).
The Republican party “establishment” started to move to the left and began to take on the unfortunate traits we’ve seen to this day of presenting a false front of opposing Democrat/Socialist big government expansion, while doing nothing to restrict it once back in power, feeling more comfortable in “managing” leftist programs (or even claiming they’re better suited to manage the Dem programs than the Dems are). This was never more clear than when Eisenhower, the preferred candidate of the party establishment left (over Conservative Taft), when given a majority in Congress at the start of his term, did absolutely nothing to begin to roll back 2 decades of big government. He could’ve served as a Democrat with very little difference. Ultimately, Ike and a statist GOP collapsed by the end of the 1950s, by 1958 returning to 1930s-level numbers in office (Dems getting 2/3rds of Congress).
The GOP would’ve continued to remain statist to near-irrelevant if it did not make aggressive attempts to appeal to the right (1966, 1980, 1994, 2010, 2016) in reaction to leftist Dem overreaches. As “Conservative” as Mr. Michel was in voting, he was not suited personality-wise to leading a fight to win a majority. He “accepted” that the Dems were the majority party and gratefully worked out private deals to achieve crumbs for not making a fuss. It’s no wonder the media at present loves to cite this era as their favorite, with the dominant left wing never challenged in their supremacy.
Michel, of course, should never have risen past a backbencher, but such was the situation in a very statist GOP that he would rise to leader, and would exit just as the party discovered its backbone and would fight for power.
No, John Rhodes chose to voluntarily step down in 1981 (although he did declare if the GOP won a House Majority in 1980, he would run for Speaker). The consensus seemed to be he wasn’t up to being a strong leader and public voice for the party during that difficult post-Watergate period, especially by the younger (Conservative) activist members. He actually remained in Congress for another term until 1983. Unfortunately for us and the nation, his open seat was won by McQueeg.
Ah, I figured it wasn’t voluntarily since he ran for reelection.
Did he or anyone think there was a chance at winning the House in 1980?
That they needed about 60 seats to flip made it unlikely (they came up 27 seats short, 191R to 244D). Of course, had the country voted then as they do now with the House/Senate seats generally going the same as the Presidential vote, they’d have won, what, over 350 seats ?
The big problem was that the GOP was still a weak minority party, in many areas it couldn’t or wouldn’t compete with substantive candidates, and even if it did, the candidates didn’t have the financial or GOTV resources to make them competitive (Dem gerrymandering was also a problem, as we would see, especially in California).
A proposal made in the early ‘70s was to try to form an alliance between the GOP and disgruntled Conservative Democrats to try to elect a Speaker to wrestle leadership away from the Democrat left, but that came to naught and the Dems stuck with their party. Neither Rhodes or Michel would’ve been nimble enough to entice 30 Boll Weevils to their side, since it would’ve been all those apostate Dems putting their necks on the line with no guarantees from the GOP to protect them (and with a weak GOP in many areas they hailed from, it would be difficult to do).
Wilson was more conservative than Taft
No. Taft was also more consrvative than Theodore Roosevelt. The wing represented by Roosevelt seems to memoredominant than the one represented by Taft.
Your post-1930 analysis strikes me as very sound.
However, I am not so sure that I see that:
the center-right was already the dominant force in the Republicans by 1896.
The Spanish-American war does not strike me as conservative, and Theodore Roosevelt doesn’t seem to me conservative at all. That Roosevelt was able to strip so much support away from Taft, a sitting president, and carry a higher percentage of the vote than Taft (who finished 3rd, four percentage points behind Roosevelt) says to me that the centre-right was not yet dominant.
Well, with the capture of the Democrats by the left in 1896 under Bryan, it was William McKinley who offered the country a continuation of center-right normalcy, closer in style to the outgoing Cleveland Administration. Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t a national figure yet at that point. It was New Jersey political operative Garret Hobart who went on the ticket with McKinley that year.
The Republicans weren’t entirely unified with the business class that year, with many plains and mining state Silverite left-wingers splitting from the party and going with Bryan. The Cleveland Democrats (Pro-Gold) even put up a ticket of their own in 1896.
TR was elected Governor of NY as a Reformist in 1898 and attracted national attention. The GOP party bosses weren’t too happy with him (they never are with outsider reformists, look at the opposition to Trump). With VP Hobart’s death before the 1900 elections, they placed him on the ticket with the President (and becoming VP in those days was almost the political kiss of death), hoping that would deflate any ambitions and keep him quiet for the next 4 years. Only with McKinley’s assassination did that “nothingburger” VP job mean something again (repeating the same situation as a NY pol by the name of Arthur did following an OH pol named Garfield to the Presidency 20 years earlier).
TR didn’t really market himself as a left-winger, but as a reformist against the party bosses and big business types (he did explicitly blast the Socialist Democrats). Again, it was somewhat Trumpian-style Populism. Aspects of it at the time could be viewed as antithetical to Conservatism, but it wasn’t of the pinko variety, it was a new appeal to nationalism. As it was, TR only ran one successful Presidential race, that in 1904, against a moderate Democrat opponent from NY, Judge Alton B. Parker (Parker trying to walk a fine line by appealing to both the old Cleveland wing and the Bryan firebrands, the latter having come off 2 failed runs in a row).
TR expected William Howard Taft to continue his style of governance (Taft himself was not really a politician, 1908 being the first time he had run a race for office, the previous jobs all having been appointed, such as Cabinet and Governor-General of the Philippines). I got the impression he wanted Taft to be a puppet for his policies, since TR had stupidly (for him) chose not to run in 1908. When Taft started to chart his own course, TR resented him and set out to defeat him by any means.
It seemed like Taft was never able to get any traction of his own accord and get out from under TR’s dominating force of personality to become a strong political force in his own right. The 1912 GOP Convention was a brutal and ugly affair, described as the worst since 1872 when the pro- and anti-Grant forces split. You had 3 major candidates, TR representing his own faction, Taft, and from the far-left, WI’s Robert La Follette, Sr. Had the TR and La Follette factions been able to unite the center-left Progressive wings, Taft could’ve been deposed at the convention and even a battered Roosevelt might’ve been able to defeat NJ Gov. Wilson in the general.
As it was, with 2 Republicans going into the general election, Wilson was going to prevail with a plurality (similar to the 1992 election, with the Dem base holding for Clinton and Republicans splitting between Bush, Sr. and Perot). The combined total for Roosevelt and Taft was 50.6% with Wilson getting just 41.8% (lower than Clinton’s 43%). The split was almost right down the middle, with 23% going for Taft, 27% for Roosevelt. It had to be difficult, too, for regular Republican voters having to figure who to vote for as November approached, stick with the President or go with Roosevelt, who was closer to beating Wilson if he could pull away.
Still, for all the claimed popularity of TR, getting just over 27% was not exactly an affirmation of that. Worse yet, because the two parties also ran separate downballot tickets, it enabled the Democrats to win Congress with pluralities, and gave Wilson carte blanche to do his worst as a Socialist (and again, TR did consider himself to be to Wilson’s right).
Despite the fissure in the party, it was able to reunite within 2 cycles and only due to some mistakes on the part of centrist Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, came within an inch of dispatching Wilson (California being the key to the election in the Electoral College, which sadly went to the Dem).
With the Dems being toxic in 1920, whomever the GOP nominated that year was likely to win. Initially the race was between Gen. Leonard Wood (representing the former TR forces) and IL Gov. Frank O. Lowden (an old-line McKinleyite). Wood lacked political experience and Lowden might’ve taken it had he not been seen at the convention attempting to outright buy the nomination. That left the dark-horse Ohioan Harding, a Conservative, to get the nomination, and gave the GOP the largest margins in the modern era (outside the South, still one-party Dem), and Conservative dominance until the former Progressive Hoover blew it, leading to FDR and all that came after.
Just as one last aside, FDR ran to Hoover’s right in 1932 claiming to be a fiscal Conservative (a gargantuan falsehood, as it turned out to be). Ironically, had FDR employed the same tactics President Harding and Treasury Secretary Mellon employed in 1921 in ending the Wilson Recession of 1920, we’d have been out of the Depression before 1936. FDR, of course, exacerbated it, successfully blamed it all on the GOP (even into the ‘40s). It really took close to 20-24 years to recover from the economic damage. By then, of course, the GOP had slumped into a “me too” party, and the aforementioned statist and moribund entity.
One last comment, I consider President Harding to be one of the great Presidents, which counters that of many historians (left-leaning). Harding was the last President to date who cut taxes and spending/government size in order to hasten the end of the Wilson recession and boom of the 1920s. Leftist historians hate Harding because he proved quickly and easily that Conservative economics works and spectacularly so. He was fortunate to have Coolidge to continue those policies. The 1924 election, curiously, was the last time that both parties put up right-of-center nominees for President, to the horror of the left (GOPer Coolidge and former Wilson Solicitor-General and WV Congressman John W. Davis for the Dems). That was also the last time the GOP carried a lot of now-stalwart Dem areas (such as St. Paul, MN, Boston-Suffolk in MA and every single county in NY state, including all 5 NYC boroughs). The left put up their own party under the Progressive label, running the Republican Socialist nutter Sen. La Follette.
RIP. Seemed like a good guy.
But a good guy that was satisfied being the leader of the permanent underling party.
What were at least three issues on which Republicans and Democrats usually disagreed between 1950 & ‘70? I wonder that because I heard that, in 1962, Kennedy proposed large tax rate cuts that were similar to the cuts that Reagan proposed in 1981, and few Democrats complained, when Kennedy said it. In 1968, then-VP Humphrey said that fewer Americans should have babies out of wedlock. Few Democrats complained about that speech, but many Democrats complained when then-VP Quayle said the same thing in his 1992 Murphy Brown speech.
Because of those issues, I think that, in the 1960’s, many Democrats were almost as conservative as the Republicans, but they became more liberal. When and why did they become more liberal? I used google, to find that information, but that didn’t help.
Before the explosion of social issues in the ‘60s/’70s, there were differences on domestic issues, foreign policy, civil rights. There was the genuine fear that 2 decades of Democrat Presidents had allowed extensive Soviet infiltration of the government, institutions and culture (proven correct) and helped rapidly move the country leftward, as many other countries were in Europe, Africa, Asia, et al, were.
The “supply side”-esque tax cuts proposed by JFK from the ludicrously high confiscatory rates up to that time was one of the few “Conservative” proposals of his. The GOP hadn’t touted such tax cuts since the Harding-Coolidge era and wouldn’t again until Reagan. Nixon embraced Keynesian economics, which was why the ‘70s was such a disaster, culminating with Carter.
The crisis of illegitimacy was raised by Daniel Patrick Moynihan during the 1960s (before he was a Senator), especially focused on the rapid disintegration of the Black family in that decade. He was denounced by the left as a racist, but it didn’t change the fact he was correct. If both parties had focused on dealing with that, the slide might’ve been stopped. Unfortunately, Democrats discovered it behooved them NOT to address it and allow more and more Blacks to become slaves to welfare and dependent upon leftist policies, even if it meant sky-high illegitimacy & unemployment, crime rates, drug usage, low education rates, et al. Almost all Democrats today benefit from the dysfunction, and the CBC members (Cong. Black Caucus) especially benefit from the misery and degradation in exploiting their own people (something Booker T. Washington, a Republican, warned about in the late 19th century).
Dems, of course, complained about Quayle’s speech because it was firing a shot at their destructive, libertine policies that were toxic to the family unit. They were purveyors of the fantasy that women alone were good enough to raise children (in the case of Moynihan, he was bemoaning poor Black women having multiple out-of-wedlock births, but in the case of Quayle, his was directed at the trendy notion of middle-class career women choosing to have a child without a dad in the picture. Each were wrong, but for different reasons. Economic security, via welfare payments/guaranteed housing or a high-paying job cannot be a substitute for the need for fathers).
The drastic social split between the two parties began in earnest once previously settled social conservatism grounded in religious values, which had been set in stone from the founding of the country up until the 1960s, started to manifest itself. The left embraced the trendy issues under the false claim of freedom in a race to the bottom (frankly, it was just another phase by the left in a way to undermine our strength and core bedrock principles and completely eradicate our nation, the Alinskyite method amongst others, the Marxist revolution). The right sought to resist the decay.
Unfortunately for the right, at the same time the left had infiltrated key aspects of our society: cultural/entertainment, education, religion, law. Producing footsoldiers to carry out “the cause” of completely undoing everything that made America great. Globalism, in their next phase, to undermine our borders and flood our country with aliens whose values system were often anathema to ours. We’ve been in a pitched war against the left for the greater part of the past century.
Thank you.
Much of this I never knew, other bits I have forgotten (like Roosevelt running to the fiscal right of Hoover).
Your knowledge of American History is truly impressive.
Thank you for your kind words.
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