Posted on 06/08/2008 6:37:34 AM PDT by vietvet67
The first boss I ever had, in 1968, was a Nixon-hater. A Democrat from upstate New York, he kept a coffee mug emblazoned with a Nixon $3 bill, and he could recite the litany of Nixon's red-baiting campaigns. First there was Jerry Voorhees in 1946, then there was Alger Hiss and the pumpkin papers. Then there was Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950. You can imagine that I was surprised when Nixon won the presidency that November.
We learned later that Richard Nixon's victory over Hubert Humphrey in 1968 was the first victory of Nixon's "southern strategy," a deliberate attempt to woo Southern Democrats in the years after the passage of the landmark civil rights acts of the mid 1960s. "States rights" and "law and order" were racist code words calculated to appeal to the racist hearts of white Southern voters.
Over the years this meme seems to have become all-consuming and all-explaining for our Democratic friends. On the net there are hundreds of liberals for whom politics is defined by the Democrats' support of civil rights versus the Republicans' racist Southern Strategy. In Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America Rick Pearlstein tells us that today's divisive politics is all the result of Richard Nixon's cunning rise to power. We are the divided nation that Nixon created.
Even John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira in The Emerging Democratic Majority,a generally optimistic prophecy of future Democratic dominance, need to poke Republicans in the eye on civil rights.
After 1964, the Democrats embraced, and the Republicans rejected, the cause of civil rights. The new conservative movement took root in opposition to the federal civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965.
(In the Chicago Spring of Reverend Wright and Father Pfleger, the above statement is hereby declared inoperative.)
Now comes The New Yorker's George Packer to expand on this in "The Fall of Conservatism." Pat Buchanan and Richard Nixon, he writes, saw the potential for a right-wing coalition back in 1966.
"From Day One, Nixon and I talked about creating a new majority," Buchanan told [Packer]... "What we talked about, basically, was shearing off huge segments of F.D.R.'s New Deal coalition[.]"
So off they went to sow division in the Democratic Party, using a politics of "positive polarization." It "ensured that American politics would be an ugly, unredeemed business for decades to come."
But now in 2008 "the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought to power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Gingrich radicalized, DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces" is over. America is moving on into a new political era, for neither John McCain or Barack Obama got signed up in the Sixties for the culture war. According to David Brooks, "there's just no driving force, and it will soften up normal Republicans for real change."
It is certainly true that conservatives and Republicans feel disoriented and confused this election season. But it misses the point to say, as Packer does:
Now most conservatives seem incapable of even acknowledging the central issues of our moment: wage stagnation, inequality, health care, global warming. They are stuck in the past, in the dogma of limited government.
On the contrary, conservatives have rather clear ideas on the "central issues." Conservatives have a cure for wage stagnation and inequality. It is called education reform. Conservatives have a cure for inequality. It is called Social Security reform and aims to get lower-income Americans onto the wealth creation ladder. But we can't enact reform because Democrats won't let us. We'd like to reform health care by curbing the wasteful third-party payment system, and we are making some progress under the radar with Health Savings Accounts. But Democrats are pushing one-size-fits-all top-down changes to health care policy instead.
If you look back over the last 30 years, back over the record of conservative reform, there is one thing that stands out. Conservative reform never had a chance unless there was a crisis. The Reaganomics of hard money and low tax rates only got done in the crisis of Carter inflation/recession. The Bush tax cuts only got passed in the tech meltdown. Welfare reform only got passed when Newt Gingrich put a gun to President Clinton's reelection prospects in 1996.
The problem that today's conservatives face is that things aren't bad enough on the Social Security front, on the education front, or on the health-care front for the American people to be ready for "change." So Republican primary voters sensibly nominated John McCain, a man to fight the war on Islamic extremism while holding the line on domestic issues.
If you want to be cheered up about conservative prospects, you need only take a look at the resurgent Conservative Party in England. Eleven years ago Tony Blair got elected as "New Labour" to improve public services, supposedly wrecked by "Tory cuts." But after a doubling of health care expenditure and huge increases in education costs there is no improvement and the voters are hopping mad.
Now that he is 20 points ahead in the polls, what are the "central issues" for Conservative leader David Cameron? School choice, welfare reform, and police reform.
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.
One thing I can say for sure, is that the American voting public will get exactly what they deserve.
Been there done that. Never going to do it again and I highly resent being forced to make that decision for the second time....so I am not going to do it.
When this is over, we will be better for it, or we will cease to be. Either way, we will be better for it.
PININ’ for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?
Gingrich pulled the rug out from under himself, with his private life. Plain and simple, the guy is bright as heck when it comes to politics, but LOUSY at behaving morally.At this point, he’s best at a behind-the-scenes role as an ideologue, rather than as a candidate. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in a supernova of being elected to nationwide office. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that, and neither do many of his followers.
McCain won on the margin with crossover votes from independents and donkeys in the early open primaries while conservatives split their votes primarily between Thompson, Huckabee and Romney among others. The Baptists and Evangelicals favored Huckabee heavily, hurting Thompson badly, especially in South Carolina, where McCain was helped by a large veteran population. What's your version of what happened?
The day John McCain becomes the nominee of the Republican Party is the day that I leave that Party.
Mitt may be a Republican, but he's certainly no conservative!
ROFL!
The promised conservative support for Fred simply never materialized. "Conservatives" were too busy supporting those stalwart icons of conservativsm Ron McRombeeani and leaving true conservatives like Fred, TOm and Duncan to swing in the wind.
Fred was reduced to doing 38 cities in Iowa by bus in one month alone.
You're believing too much of the MSM propaganda.
Actually, I think that was the Founding Fathers. You know, that stuff about “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” and “subject to the laws of nature and nature’s God.”
We could’ve had Mitt? Why would we want yet another slick-talking liberal?
I’d say I’m a small governmentarian... for all issues.
I don’t believe that the government has any business trying to solve social or economic problems.
Gay marriage? Why the heck is the government even IN the business of marriage? Isn’t that between you, G-d, and the priest/pastor/rabbi/imam/guru/etc, etc, etc?
High gas prices? How about we just get the government to butt out of the problem? IE - reduce or remove the regulations and prohibitions on production.
In almost every case, the best way to solve a problem is to get rid of government meddling.
But in today’s world, that isn’t a Republican ideal... it’s now a Libertarian one.
Conservatives under 40 are rarely any longer social conservatives.
They are Scoop Jackson Democrats really.
Silent Majority....in the cemetary mostly now.
Moral Majority......probably over 50% dead now.
I’m 50 and I’m the tail end of the culture war righties.
I read what kids around here say about gender, race and religion and they all sound like my college professors did in the 70s.
“I’m not Dead or Resting. I’m just tired of voting for the lesser of two evils!”
You have to have a horse in the race. We don’t put anyone up and then we complain when we have to make a choice between the lesser of two evils.
Flaccid...McCain does NOT excite.
I think this dude, like Mike Huckabee, has been listening to Mike Huckabee's pollsters.
Followers, not leaders, just like 99% of the so-called "leaders" in America today...in the GOP, and even in "conservative" positions of "power."
And they're following the Left...to hell in a handbasket.
You can trace all of that to “leaders” who are cowards.
That's an understatement, but I fear Juan Peron Obama.
We conservatives are watching for a few years, as anarchists and communists sponsoring our leadership now will learn about consequences. Due to our current policies, we’ll be involved in a war the likes the world has never seen within the next few years. Our Nation will then need men and will be forced to honor those men, after they return.
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