1936 All Over Again

www.redstate.org ^ | 8/26/2004 | Thomas

[x1stcav]

1936 All Over Again By: Thomas · Section: Election 2004

Let us not mince words: The Democrats have gone mildly mad.

[x1stcav]

1936 All Over Again By: Thomas · Section: Election 2004

Let us not mince words: The Democrats have gone mildly mad.

By this, I do not mean that every Democrat the nation over has wandered into Michael Moore Land. Nor do I mean that (most) are currently foaming at the mouth in a paroxysm of Bushitler!! rage.

Rather, I mean to say that we are watching the Democrat Party begin the slow slide into semi-permanent minority status that characterized the Republican Party for the better part of five decades, and the reflexive, unsubstantiated loathing of the opposition's party leaders that entails. The Democrats are, essentially, reliving the fall of 1936 all over again.

Read on. Posted On: Aug 26th, 2004: 04:37:22, Rated: 5.00/1

The parallels are obvious. From 1864 to 1932, the Republican Party was the dominant party in this country. The GOP captured all but four of the Presidential elections in that time span. Supreme Court jurisprudence trended (very vaguely) right (or at least, especially in the freedom of contract cases, sided with the Republican view). Congress was a generally Republican (or at least, usually not Democrat) club.

1936 was the turning point. Roosevelt had defeated the phenomenally incompetent, statist Herbert Hoover in 1932; Republicans thought that a fluke. Given Roosevelt's complete inability to do anything at all about the continuing Depression; his sops to populists (to deflect the ghost of Huey Long and the Union Party); and the perception that his administration had huge (statist) goals, but not much to show for it; Republicans saw a return to power coming.

For the first time since 1902 (thus, the second time ever), however, a sitting President's party gained seats in the mid-terms. For whatever reason, Americans found FDR's deeply screwy policies more attractive than the GOP's deeply schizophrenic ones. (The GOP was trying to recover from watching the Depression start on Hoover's watch, and couldn't put together a governing platform.)

So, the Republicans nominated Alf Landon, an anodyne governor of Kansas whom no one would ever mistake for Calvin Coolidge. Landon was a decent enough fellow, who decided that the lesson of the Hoover years was that Republicans weren't statist enough -- but that the Democrats were too statist. The porridge-is-too-hot-the-porridge-is-too-cold comparisons to John Kerry are obvious, but let us not malign Landon too much: He was a significantly more engaging speaker than Kerry has ever been.

Everyone thought the election would be razor-close. It wasn't. The GOP was knocked back flat on its heels, and even spectacular gains in the 1938 midterms didn't help the Republicans pull out of the tailspin in which they found themselves. The story of the Republican Party for the next four and a half decades was: They could only win -- and only organize themselves as -- Democrat-lite politicians, always arguing that the soup is just a touch too spicy, not arguing that gazpacho soup should be served cold, dangit, and with very little spice at all. Eisenhower was no great conservative. Nixon was arguably the most liberal American President of the second half of the twentieth century. Ford was... Ford. And for the sake of long-dead Republican politicians at every level, we won't even talk about Congress.

Fast forward to the present. The pundits are all calling a tight election, the President's party made gains in the last midterm, and to challenge a President who's had fairly good popularity ratings, the Democrats nominate: An anodyne, charisma-free Senator -- a Senator! -- whose policy positions, especially on the issues that seem larger to the American public, appear to be a lite version of his opponent's. The popular wisdom, as in 1936 (and 1996 -- remember how everyone talked about a divided electorate then?), is that this is a tightly divided electorate, and whichever man wins, will win small.

For the record: Bull. Incumbents either win big or lose big. My personal bet is 52-44 Bush, but I'm amenable to moving his numbers up. Bottom line: There won't be last-minute court battles in this one.

This election is simply the last phase of the Democrats' inadvertent concession of governance -- the beginning of which was either 1956 (Adlai Stevenson is famous for being the first Democrat presidential candidate to openly loathe the people he was trying to represent), 1968 (when the real wackos in the Party tried to run the convention from the streets, and failed), or 1972 (when they ran the convention from the inside). Republicans are the de facto majority party now. Fundamentally, this is because the Democrats ran out of ideas, and simply came to accept that they were the governing party de facto as well as de jure. The party leadership became more interested in holding power -- and regaining it once they lost it -- than in expounding new ideas. The rank-and-file smelled something fishy, and either produced the Convention of 1972, bolted for the Republicans, or left themselves open to a good flirt from whatever left-wing party came down the pike.

Consider for a moment their dilemma: For what does the modern Democrat Party stand?

"Progressive" politics? Tell that to the Clintons and the DLC.

Peace-at-all-costs? Resign yourselves to permanent minority status in this country. (See also, placing multilateral commitments on the same level as national security.)

Tax increases and spending increases? It's been done and rejected.

Labor alignment? See "tax and spend."

Universal health care? If you truly think this is (1) a new idea (2) an idea that will have traction and/or (3) an animating principle for a party, I suggest you begin imagining the fun Republican media heads will have with superimposed images of Canadian and British health care. But good luck with that.

Abortion uber alles? Well, based on what I've seen, that may be the only idea they've got left.

Consider, too, how key points of the Democrat platform are breaking down, even intra-party. Or, to get off the hot-button topic of the last three decades, try this: Are the Democrat[ic] Leadership Council types -- Clinton, Gore Before the Madness, Kerry Before He Would Be President -- the true face of the Democrats? Or is the re-ascendant old guard?

Or, if you need some inferential proof of the Party's slow self-destruction, let's look at Senator Corzine. Mr. Corzine is openly flirting with a gubernatorial run in what, after all, would probably be a shoo-in race. Fine. But as Orrin Judd points out, one tends to see a lot more defections from Congress -- from the head of the Democrats' Senate Campaign Committee, no less -- when one's party is consigned to minority status. (Admittedly, this might also be because the path to the Presidency goes through governors' mansions these days, and every Senator sees a President looking back at him in the mirror.)

The partisan in me hopes this is so -- breaking, for four to six decades, the power of the Democrat Party would be a wonderful turn of events, in so many ways. But again, let us not equivocate: There are consequences, in a realignment, for the majority party, too. The party, and its leadership, stops developing fresh ideas, and instead becomes fixated on perpetuating the successful policies of the realignment as a method of holding political power. Doubt me? Name a new idea the Democrats have proposed, other than containment of the Soviets and the space race (which was just part and parcel of the same thing), since the New Deal. The Great Society was an extension of the New Deal. The Civil Rights decades were an intra-party war to revive the ideas of the 1870s. I'm serious: I cannot think of a single, radical new idea of the Democrat Party after 1944. Sure, a lot of tweaks were offered; but what revolutionary ideas have the Dems offered since? This is, after all, precisely what happened to the GOP in the 1920s: Coolidge to the side, they ran out of intellectual impetus, especially after the nasty intra-party wars of the 1910s.

And so, as the sun slowly sets on the party of FDR, Truman, LBJ, Carter, and Clinton, let us observe what the Democrats have come to: They are a party in search of an idea. Indeed, to my mind, the worst indictment I can offer on this count is this: The animating principle of DemCampaign2004 has been: Anyone but Bush. Huh? Why not: Anyone but Bush, so long as he will advance X? If the Democrat Party exists only to oppose the Republican Party, it won't be a Party for much longer.

In the next installment (frighteningly, that sounds like a Tom Friedman lead-in), I'll look at what the actual ideological effects of realignment might be.

[catpuppy]

Great article. Thanks for posting it. A landslide is coming in November.

[Pylot]

A woman wrote in to Bill Bennett's show this morning and said "we are witnessing the rejection of the Democrats World View"

I have to agree.

[LongsforReagan]

Good stuff, if you have a ping list, please add me.

[rdb3]

I sure hope so. I can think of few things I desire more than a sledgehammer being bured in the head of that ugly donkey.

$710.96... The price of freedom
VII-XXIII-MMIV

[Patton@Bastogne]

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CatPuppy


A landslide is coming in November.


Wretchard wrote an excellent piece at the Belmont Club a few months back. Here it is, along with the Internet link.


Internet Link:

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/10/dustbin-of-history-left-has.html



The Dustbin of History : WRETCHARD at Belmont Club


Thursday, October 23, 2003


The Left has consistently portrayed itself as the party of the Future and the vanguard of history. But in truth it has become a party of the old. According to a recent survey by Harvard's Institute of Politics, nearly 90% of American college students consider themselves patriotic and nearly two thirds (61%) approve of President Bush's job performance. The rejection of the Left within its academic bastion can only be compared to a defeat of the US Army within the infantry training grounds of Fort Benning. If, having lost organized labor and the American working class, the Left cannot hold here, it can hold nowhere.


Nor is the shrinkage of the Left confined to the demographic sphere. It is in full retreat across the whole map of the globe. First ousted from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Left has been unceremoniously evicted from the formerly Nasserite Arabian peninsula, where it has been supplanted by radical Islam. Even in the Pacific, hardly a trace can now be found of the Communist Party of Indonesia or PKI, once the third largest in the world after China's and Russia's in the 1960s. It has been replaced by the Jemaah Islamiyah.


The last strongholds of Left are in the aging countries of Western Europe, whose liberal attitudes are increasingly at odds with the socially more conservative, burgeoning and youthful populations of the Third World. The recent elevation of the openly gay Gene Robinson by the American Episcopalian Church underscores the widening cultural gap: it was met with fierce criticism from the Third World Episcopalian Churches, who threatened schism unless the unscriptural act were withdrawn. The liberals, unaware how far out of step they were, and perhaps still under the illusion that they represented the future rather than the past, served notice that they would cut off the Third World churches from monetary assistance unless their gay bishop was accepted, to which Bernard Malango, the primate of Central Africa replied gamely, "This is simony. Let the powerful people keep their money."


The decimation of the Left, which has come upon them so quickly that they have hardly assimilated the fact, will have enormous implications. The first is the political vacuum created by its fall, which Islam will rapidly strive to fill. The second is the dislocation of organizations like the British Conservative Party, which have largely defined themselves in opposition to the Left, a Left that is no more, leaving them to grope for a positive reason for existence.


The Left is dead, although the fact is not yet apparent to all, least of all to the dwindling Communist faithful. But the fact remains, and it reminds us of Nietzche's prophetic parable which concludes:


"I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves.





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[bobjam]

The Democrats lost in 1968. And that's when they went radical. In RFK they had the dream of returning to what they thought the Kennedy Administration was (it really wasn't). The election would be Nixon vs Kennedy. RFK would win and everything would be great. But the fallout of 5 years of LBJ, a terrorist assasin, and a riot in Chicago later, Nixon beat Humphrey. Since then, three liberal idealogues captured the Democratic nomination and lost in landslides (McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis). The Democratic successes came in the persons of two southern governors (not patrician elitists of the liberal northeast) who presented themselves as "Republican light" and won (albeit narrowly. The electorate caught onto Carter by 1980 and ousted him easily. They caught onto Clinton rather quickly and ousted his party from Congress in 1994. Clinton changed his approach and won in 1996, but by 2000, enough people weren't fooled and Bush won a hard fought race. Into which category does Kerry fall: a southern governor who is moderate for his party or a liberal northern elitist?

[RoseofTexas]

Mildly mad? A misprint perhaps? You mean WILDLY mad...right?!!

[x1stcav]

Thanks for the Wretchard piece. I've only discovered Belmont Club a few months ago and hadn't time to rummage through his archives.

Is the Internet great or what?

[x1stcav]

I agree with you that 1968 was their turning point. If we thought they were bad after that, what'll they be like after this November? Increasingly irrelevant? Spent?

[RockinRight]

Looking better every day for W.

Also high time for Thune to beat Daschle and Keyes to beat Obama.

[Captain Kirk]

The author also forgets that the GOP also had a turning point but it was in 1988. Since then, they have adopted the big government ideals of the Democratic party, Most recently Dubya signed Teddy Kennedy's education bill and a partial nationalization of medical care via prescription drugs.

In some sense, th 1936 comparision is apt. FDR promised certain things in 1932 (including a balanced budget and spending cuts) but did not deliver. Dubya promised limited government and opposition to nation building in 2000 but also did not deliver.

[RockinRight]

It does seem today's youth is considerably more patriotic and conservative than kids were when I was in high school in the early-to-mid 90s.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Graybeard58]

Name a new idea the Democrats have proposed, other than containment of the Soviets and the space race

The democrats idea of "containment" of the Soviets was an utter failure and set back real efforts to defeat them by decades. Read "Treason" by Ann coulter. She says it quite well.

As for the "space race" the dems just happened to be in power when most of it was going on in the early days. I refuse to give them credit in advancement in science and technology. Their policies have been more than worthless for the past 60 years they have been counter productive in every area.

[x1stcav]

Good points. I have been at this conservative thing for about 45 years now and a lot of what W has done (such as the examples you've given) rankle me.

Then I have to remind myself of the concept of incrementalism. Thus I'm left with the gnawing suspicion that I'm allowing myself to accept a rationalization that we are really introducing Conservative principles over the long haul while, in actuality, we are just being deftly and effectively thwarted in our aims by a very entrenched, subtle, and all-pervasive left.

So I am waiting to see what W does with immigration and the ownership society. Am I one of the frogs which is experiencing the continued heating of the water?

Where is the next RR?

[Poincare]

Abortion uber alles? Well, based on what I've seen, that may be the only idea they've got left.

I wish. Pro-Life is slowly triumphing due in no small part to scientific imaging of growing life. Good. But.....

Conservatism's Achilles' heel is environmentalism. E is complex and the GOP does not have a position that appeals to young voters. Oddly enough it seems that only the mouth-foamer Mchael Savage has a reasoned and appealing view of environment issues.

[Steely Tom]

Hear me now and believe me later. The left-wing bias of the main-stream media is hurting the Dems much more than it hurts us. This is because it shields them from the real world and lets them retreat into a fantasyland of self gratification.

The MSM does for liberals what a strong painkiller does for a case of advanced gangrene.

(steely)

[Sam the Sham]

This article is confusing.

The American people in 1936 WANTED a statist response to the Depression. They did not want a gold standard, "business of America is business" Calvin Coolidge Old Guard Republican. They had lost all confidence in things turning around by themselves and were not interested in laissez faire theory.

Landon's failing was that he was saddled with the most inept pressure group in history. The Liberty League. The Liberty League was a group of very, very rich Republicans who hated FDR as intensely as Moveon hates Bush. They tried to make themselves look like a grass roots movement. But they were too obviously a bunch of rich people preaching bootstrap rugged individualism to the guys on the breadlines from their yachts and penthouses. They backfired very, very badly and took Landon down with them.