The Right-Wing Revolution [as told by the Left-Wing]

That America’s political center is to the right of every other modern democracy is nothing new, but why has it recently lurched so much further right? A belligerent cowboy president who says he’s doing God’s work seems on the verge of being elected to another term of office; both houses of Congress are in the hands of conservative Republicans who, thirty years ago, would have been considered wild extremists; most state governments are dominated by born-again bible-thumpers. To describe the recent takeover of America by the right wing of the Republican Party as a revolution is only a slight exaggeration. Liberal enclaves still exist along the east and west coasts, and in America’s biggest cities. Most Americans are only dimly aware of the ideological coup. And America’s radical conservatives are not nearly as bizarre or xenophobic as Europe’s "far Right." But there should be no doubt that the right has taken over America, with revolutionary consequences for America and the world.

The attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, has been used by Republicans to justify their continuing dominance, but the ideological revolution at issue here preceded the "war against terror." Why did the revolution occur? Two new books offer starkly different answers. In The Right Nation, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, journalists at The Economist, see in America’s new right a response to the excesses of sixties’ liberalism. In What’s the Matter With America? (published in the United States as What’s the Matter with Kansas), Thomas Frank, an American journalist, understands it as a much more recent phenomenon, a new backlash against cultural liberalism.

For Micklethwait and Wooldridge, the pendulum that swung leftward in the sixties would inevitably swing to the right. "All it took was for the Democratic Party to lurch to the left for the sleeping giant of conservatism to be awakened." Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society "turned into a gigantic exercise in overreach." With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, white southerners began their slow but steady march toward the Republican Party. The Republican presidential candidate that year, Senator Barry Goldwater, one of only eight Republican senators to have voted against that measure, lost the presidential election but sowed seeds of the right-wing revolution.

The rest of the story is standard fare, but Micklethwait and Wooldridge tell it well, offering a thoughtful and balanced view. A series of Supreme Court decisions, prohibiting prayer in public schools (1962), legalizing the sale of contraceptives (1965), barring the death penalty (1965), and allowing abortion (1973) offended the moral sensibilities of middle America. Northern working-class whites were also pushed rightward by the radicalization of blacks, urban riots, and court-ordered busing to achieve "racial balance" in schools. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, became a gaggle of anti-war protesters, feminists, environmentalists, and claimants to government benefits. The 1972 Democratic platform featured separate planks on rights of the poor, Native Americans, the physically disabled, the mentally retarded, elderly, women, children, and veterans. Democrats seemed to pay more attention to the constitutional rights of released convicts than to street violence. As crime surged and births to unmarried black women escalated, "the conservative message -- that government was the problem, not the solution, began to resonate. Nixon’s "Silent Majority" began to become a vocal majority.

Hence, according to Micklethwait and Wooldridge, was the conservative movement born. "First came the thinkers who talked about the importance of markets or religion. Then came the legions of tax cutters and Evangelical Christians who gave those ideas political voice," followed by "a counter-establishment of think tanks, pressure groups and media stars that was initially intended to counterbalance the liberal establishment but has now turned into an establishment of its own right -- and one with a harder edge than its rival." Ronald Reagan was a product of the movement; George W., its most recent incarnation.

It’s a tidy story, but it didn’t quite happen that way. In fact, American politics remained quite moderate through the 1970s and 1980s. Until 1994, Congress was mostly controlled by Democrats and still harbored a number of liberal Republicans. Even under Reagan, the nation continued to extend civil rights and social programs. Medicaid for the poor was expanded. Environmental protections grew. Women gained steadily wider access to higher education and the professions. "Supply-side economics," Reagan’s singular contribution to wishful thinking, proved so unpopular with Wall Street that George H. W. Bush had to raise taxes. Foreign policy remained largely under the sway of liberal internationalists. Meanwhile, the targets of conservative ire began to disappear. By the 1990s, crime rates were dropping, illegitimate births (indeed, all births) were declining, and the black middle class was growing.

Thomas Frank offers a contrasting, and to my mind more convincing, view. The rightwing backlash, he writes, is "a story of the nineties, a story of the recent." His template is his native state of Kansas, America’s geographic, economic, and cultural middle -- the proving ground for test marketers, chain restaurants, and suburban shopping centers. Like the rest of America, Kansas remained basically middle-of-road through the 1980s. It passed legislation to permit abortions even before the Supreme Court acted. In 1990, a Democratic majority was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives. It sent moderate Republicans Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum to the Senate.

Then something quite strange happened. "Nearly everyone has a conversion story to tell -- how their dad had been a union steelworker and a stalwart Democrat, but how all their brothers and sisters started voting Republican; or how their cousin gave up on Methodism and started going to the Pentecostal church out on the edge of town; or how they themselves just got so sick of being scolded for eating meat or for wearing clothes emblazoned with the State U’s Indian mascot that one day Fox News [an unabashedly right-wing TV network] started to seem ‘fair and balanced’ to them after all."

The heartland of America was in revolt against elites who wanted to impose their own cultural values -- who, in Frank’s words, "commit endless acts of hubris, sucking down lattes, driving ostentatious European cars, and trying to reform the world." A great burst of righteous indignation focused on God, guns, and gays. The official platform of the Kansas state Republican party for 1998 was a jeremiad against abortion, homosexuality, gun control, and evolution ("a theory, not a fact"), warning that "[t]he signs of a degenerating society are all around us." The following year the Kansas state board of education voted to delete all references to evolution and the age of the earth from the state’s science standards. When Senator Bob Dole resigned his Senate seat to run for president, Kansas elected born-again Sam Brownback, making the Kansas delegation to Congress 100 percent anti-abortion.

Frank doesn’t dwell on it, but the same revolt happened all over America, starting in the late 1980s and early 90s. The heartland (which came to be known, after the 2000 election, as "red America," comprising states whose residents had voted for George W. and appeared on standard electoral maps as bright red) was fed up with being dictated to by supposed east- and west-coast elites ("blue America"). Small towns, the alleged custodians of "family values," didn’t want to be pushed around by urban centers (inhabitants of large cities voted for Al Gore by a 71 percent to 26 percent margin, while small towns and rural areas voted for Bush by 59 to 38 percent). Across America, right-wing radio personalities, such as Rush Limbaugh, and TV pundits, like Bill O’Reilly and his conservative colleagues at Fox News, filled the airwaves with diatribes against coastal media (Hollywood, the major TV networks, The New York Times); America’s great coastal universities, especially the Ivy League; and intrusive government bureaucrats, snobby professionals, and Washington do-gooders (the American Civil Liberties Union, trial lawyers, environmentalists).

As Frank emphasizes, the backlash has been cultural rather than economic. Yet it emerged about the same time that the heartland’s economy was unraveling. Through the late 1980s and ’90s, huge chain stores like Wal-Mart crushed local retail businesses. During the same years, giant agri-businesses drove tens of thousands of small farmers into ruin. What was left of America’s factory jobs skipped off to Latin America and China. Meanwhile, a steadily smaller number of wealthy Americans grew even wealthier. The free market didn’t accomplish this on its own, of course. It was egged on by Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and even Bill Clinton, all of whom deregulated, privatized, and opened American markets to foreign competition.

No wonder the heartland has felt oppressed and angry. But why is the resentment expressed in cultural, not economic, terms? In its drive to stop liberal elites from "intruding," the backlash has even embraced free market ideology -- the same ideology that has been responsible for its economic free fall. Kansas "sees its countryside depopulated, its towns disintegrate, its cities stagnate -- and its wealthy enclaves sparkle, behind their remote-controlled security gates. The state erupts in revolt, making headlines around the world with its bold defiance of convention. But what do its rebels demand? More of the very measures that have brought ruination on them and their neighbors in the first place."

Republican fat cats must be laughing all the way to the banks and ballot boxes. They pose as heartland Americans and rail against Ivy League stuffed shirts when they themselves graduated from the same institutions. George W. Bush, a president’s son, educated at prestigious Andover Academy, Yale, and Harvard Business School, plays at being a down-to-earth Texan. Republican leaders of congress curse haughty professionals when they themselves are mostly lawyers and bankers. Bill O’Reilly pretends he’s a proletarian while taking home millions from his TV and radio shows and book tie-ins. Rush Limbaugh condemns drug addicts and turns out to be one. Newt Gingrich decries the gross immorality of liberals (especially Bill Clinton’s extra-marital adventure) while having an affair. Bill Bennett, the Republican’s self-appointed "morality czar," is revealed to be a gambling addict. The Bush administration poses as champion of blue-collar America yet is run by corporate tycoons.

Hypocrisy is nothing new to politicians and pundits, of course. The interesting question, which Frank never quite answers, is why America’s vast middle and working class hasn’t caught on. For twenty-five years, the wages of workers without university degrees -- that is, the vast majority -- have dropped steadily (adjusted for inflation) even though the American economy has almost doubled in size. Most of the rest has gone to the top. America’s top 1 percent now own more assets than the bottom 90 percent put together. We’re back to the days of the robber barons of the 19th century. The rich didn’t get where they are solely through hard work. The captains of American industry and their Wall Street advisors have shown no lack of ingenuity in robbing small investors and duping blue-collar employees. They’ve showered campaign contributions on politicians in order to get special favors and lower taxes. They’ve bankrolled right-wing media.

Why doesn’t middle America connect the dots? Why did it support Bush-the-younger’s tax cuts, two-thirds of which went to the very wealthy? Why is the electorate of the world’s greatest democracy actively choosing to transfer more and more wealth to a smaller and smaller fraction of itself? America’s economic elite answers that "class warfare" won’t fly here because everyone in America wants to be rich someday; the rich are admired and emulated, not scorned. But this convenient explanation glosses over Frank’s cultural backlash. If middle America resents the snobbish lifestyles of the rich, surely it could bring itself to resent their greediness as well.

The real reason is that no one is explaining to middle America what’s actually happening. Not surprisingly, the Republican Party is doing everything in its power to keep the dots disconnected. But what of the Democrats? The Democratic Party used to be the party of economic equality and social justice. Democrats once spoke openly about class. Some seventy years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a true patrician, condemned the "economic royalists" who manipulated markets for their own selfish purposes, and set up a system of wage protections and social insurance. Harry Truman took over the steel industry when its CEOs refused to cooperate during wartime. Lyndon Johnson established Medicare for all retired Americans. Democrats didn’t worship at the altar of the free market; they regulated and protected when necessary to assure average working families some modicum of economic security. Democrats believed in taxing the rich so there’d be money enough to give every American a decent chance to get ahead.

But the modern Democratic Party has pretty much given up on all of this. It has been courting upscale suburban voters -- independents with no strong party affiliation -- on the assumption that the working class has no other alternative but to vote Democratic. Democrats no longer constitute a recognizable political movement. Bill Clinton ended welfare, signed the North American Free Trade Act, slashed spending, and balanced the federal budget -- positions that any moderate Republican would be proud of. The stock market boomed and the wealthy got incomparably wealthier. But average working Americans got nowhere.

The cultural version of class warfare that Frank chronicles is the default mechanism when anger and frustration have no other means of legitimate expression. The Republican Party and its allies in the right-wing media now pose as angry populists protecting middle America from liberal snobs and know-it-all professionals. Even fighting terrorists has been turned into a cultural class struggle. Republicans accuse Democratic challenger John Kerry of being too effete, too "sensitive," too "French" to fight effectively. America, they say, needs a mean son-of-a-bitch -- a regular guy who shoots game and drives a pickup truck, a cowboy from Texas.

Republicans have perfected the language of class, denuded of economics. By failing to put the economics back in, the Democrats are giving away American politics. Micklethwait and Wooldridge may disagree with this analysis. They write that when Clinton’s anointed successor, Al Gore, "tried to rekindle populism, he lost an unlosable election." But they are wrong on two counts. It was only when Gore began talking about "the people against the powerful" that he began getting real traction in the 2000 election. And, by the way, Gore won.

Robert Reich is a Prospect co-founder. This article originally appeared in The New Statesman.

It's the same old story: the left-wing is befuddled why middle-America support Bush and the Republicans. The left argues that the economic self-interests of middle America should push them to the Democrats, but the Republicans by creating the fiction of cultural divides between the elites and the masses have brain-washed them into voting otherwise. They can’t understand why middle-America is against crucifying the rich to create more social programs designed (ostensibly) to help middle-America.

I laugh when I read crap like this but it also upsets me. The left is so delusional, so blind that they cannot even see that their arguments on this very issue carry the very seeds of why middle-America has abandoned the Democrats: Middle-America wants to be left alone, to raise their children consistent with their values, not someone else's, to earn their living, without being forced to give up almost half of it to federal and state confiscation, etc.

The left's condescension is sickening. Their constituency has always been the decrepit, sad and incapable. It infuriates them that some free spirits still survive.

"If middle America resents the snobbish lifestyles of the rich, surely it could bring itself to resent their greediness as well. "

I am a middle American and I do NOT resent the rich. Never have. Never entered my mind.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.

Hah! I read the first few paragraphs where he outlines two books that recount the rise of Conservatism in America. I was thinking to myself, "Hey, this sounds pretty accurate".

Then I got to the part where Reich says, "It’s a tidy story, but it didn’t quite happen that way.". He then goes off the deepend with his theory that the evil Republican leaders have tricked middle America into being Conservative.

Reich is a militant athiest and socialist. Let his ilk believe this pap. It only means they are less powerful because they are basing their strategies on a fantasy.

And America’s radical conservatives are not nearly as bizarre or xenophobic as Europe’s "far Right."

This, ladies and gentlemen, is as nice as Mr. Reich gets.

Big of him, isn't it? (Pun fully intended).

CAN A LIBERAL BE TRUSTED?

Defending the age-old, FAILED system of liberalism/socialism/communism. Typical godless philosophy preaching perverted ideas with twisted logic.

The typical Liberal lives in a delusional world, finding conspiracies everywhere, and makes up everything they hate.

Preaching hatred is second nature. They seem to thrive on gloom & doom. Good news for America is bad news for Liberals.

AND WHEN SOMETHING CONTRADICTS THEIR MINDLESS RANTING....THEY SIMPLY CALL IT A LIE.

Easy to understand where he's coming from when you realize that Robert Reich is the SPAWN OF SATAN!

Just Joking...Robert Reich is not the Spawn of Satan. The Spawn of Satan is much taller. Bada-bing! See what I did there. It's a short joke. I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

All kidding aside, I would not be surprised if Mr. Reich was being used by Satan. Well, eventually, he'll have to answer for that.

Best Regards

Sergio

"Bill O’Reilly pretends he’s a proletarian while taking home millions from his TV and radio shows and book tie-ins. Rush Limbaugh condemns drug addicts and turns out to be one. Newt Gingrich decries the gross immorality of liberals (especially Bill Clinton’s extra-marital adventure) while having an affair. Bill Bennett, the Republican’s self-appointed "morality czar," is revealed to be a gambling addict."

To liberals, hypocrisy is the single unforgivable offense. To them, encouraging others to be good, trying to be good, and failing is hypocrisy. I believe it is far better to strive for goodness and fail than to simply stop trying because goodness is unachievable. That's not hypocrisy, it is human. A liberal will never be accused of hypocrisy because a liberal will never set personal standards high enough to fail to meet them.

The author's theory is fine. But it is simpler than all that; Jimmy Carter was such a bad President that Middle-road democrats switched sides. The Republican Part welcomed them. Once there, they found real American principles to abide by. The migration left behind the unprincipled, anti-American leftists that comprise today's democrat party.

Reich is very right about one thing. The Democrats have become the party of Starbucks, of knowledge worker manners and mores, of the feminist career woman who has a colored mammy to raise her brats. They really don't care about the economic populist issues that Reich identifed but was silent about in the Clinton White House (as I have always said, without economic populism the Democratic party has nothing. That was why notwithstanding the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era the Democratic party lost Congress and most governorships.)

Does anyone hear Kerry talking about outsourcing in a way that shows any real conviction ?

"Reich is a militant athiest and socialist. Let his ilk believe this pap. It only means they are less powerful because they are basing their strategies on a fantasy.
"

Heh. I read the whole article without knowing who wrote it. I concluded it was some left wing socialist who was out of touch with American morality.

I was right.

How frightening that he was in charge of our Treasury!

In his desire to explain all in economic terms, he neglects the moral component of the abortion, homosexual, and national defense issues. That's the most important portion for many people.

I agree with your conclusion. Falsehoods never survive meeting reality.

Yeah, like Hollings and Byrd? Most of the southern racist Dems stayed dems - they just talked a different talk. Other than Maddox I can't think of any dems who switched... Anyone?

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, white southerners began their slow but steady march toward the Republican Party.

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