What Happened to the Republican Party?

And What It Means for American Presidential Politics

John White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317381730
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the 2016 election campaign attests, the Grand Old Party—once moderate and even magnanimous—has fallen into a prison of its own making when it comes to presidential politics. After the debacle of the George W. Bush presidency and the rout of the Romney candidacy, Republicans said they must broaden their base, become more inclusive, and return to the warmth of Reagan idealism. Instead, what we have is a bitter, backbiting, and race- and gender-baiting campaign with a candidate more exclusive than any before him. How did we get here and how do we get out? This book tracks the modern history of the Republican Party and shows its decline, even while shining a light on its high points and urging it back in a positive direction. Every reader interested in the US presidential election, the primary process, and the clash of politics and culture will find something enlightening in John White's exposition. Above all, he puts the Age of Trump into perspective, looking back as well as forward in his analysis.

Who is this book for?

• Students of American government, political parties, campaigns & elections
• Scholars in political science and political history
• General readers interested in the current presidential campaign and the health of American democracy

Features

1. Current. Anticipates the current state of the Republican Party, at odds with itself as much as with the American public. Includes 2014 midterm election data with an eye toward the 2016 presidential contest.

2. A broad historical sweep. Covers a broad historical period from the 1950s (Eisenhower era) to the present, with a strong emphasis on the Reagan years which represent the GOP at its zenith.

3. Efficient use of polling and demographic data. Takes a broad swath of historical data (including polling data) and presents it in a condensed, readable format. At the same time, the reader is not inundated by polling and demographic data.

4. Bold. Any reader will come away from this book understanding that the GOP predicament is likely to last for some time to come. The problems Republicans face are both intellectual and political. They are not likely to be solved by any one candidate or election and will be compounded and confounded by the events of 2016.

Chapter 1
Zenith

Reagan's Triumph

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”

William Shakespeare, King Henry IV

July 4, 1986. That evening found Ronald Reagan aboard the USS John F. Kennedy, stationed in New York Harbor. The president had come to New York for a two-day “Liberty Weekend” whose highlight was the rededication of the one-hundred-year-old Statue of Liberty. Millions of spectators lined the New York streets as 250 sailing vessels from thirty countries set sail in the harbor.¹ Naval guns boomed. Fighter planes screamed overhead. Stately windjammers paraded. Bells rang.² Earlier in the day, 27,000 new Americans took their citizenship oaths as Reagan celebrated the immigrant story, highlighting his recent nomination of Italo-American Antonin Scalia, a son of immigrants, to the U.S. Supreme Court.³ When Reagan bestrode the decks of the USS Kennedy accompanied by his wife, Nancy, he received a thunderous ovation from thousands of sailors in stands on the bow of the ship.⁴ It was the height of Reagan’s presidency. His overall job approval rating stood at 68 percent, with 82 percent of those under the age of twenty-four expressing support.⁵ And these high numbers translated into a string of congressional successes. At the dedication ceremony, Reagan noted that prospects of the passage of his tax reform measure had “put a smile on the face of our Statue of Liberty.”⁶ Similarly, a recent controversial House vote endorsing aid to the Nicaraguan Contras made Reagan “feel proud that on this Independence Day weekend, America has embraced these brave men and women and their independent struggle.”⁷

At sunset, with Miss Liberty watching over Reagan’s shoulder, the president delivered a short Fourth of July address from the deck of the USS Kennedy. The words were not particularly memorable (unlike other Reagan speeches)—but the setting was unforgettable.⁸ Famed producer David Wolper attended to the details—including weekend appearances by John Denver, Melissa Manchester, Barry Manilow, Johnny Cash, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, and Whitney Houston—with every image crafted for the ABC television mega-event that was broadcast to forty countries around the world. On cue, as Reagan ended his speech with the words, “Now, let’s have some fun—let the celebration begin!”⁹ laser lights enveloped the newly refurbished statue and 40,000 pyrotechnics set off from thirty barges began a nonstop twenty-eight minute spectacular. The beauty of the televised images of the largest-ever fireworks display in history was captured in the Washington Post: “Incandescent rainbows, splinters of gold and silver, sizzling stars of light reflected off the windows of Wall Street skyscrapers.”¹⁰ Stretching from the East River, around the tip of Manhattan, up into the Hudson River, and around the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the production required an estimated 220 miles of wires; 777,000 pounds of mortar tubes (through which aerial shells were launched); 30,000 pounds of equipment; and 100 pyro-technicians.¹¹

Viewers were mesmerized. Even newly appointed Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin—gaily decked out in his wife’s rumpled Khaki hat and sporting a brightly striped shirt—exclaimed: “We have every respect for the celebration as a national holiday of the United States. It is a very good statue, a very good statue.”¹² When asked how he enjoyed the event, an exuberant Reagan responded, “It was great, just great.”¹³ On that unforgettable Fourth of July, there was a merging of the man, the president, patriotic pride, and a renewal of the timeless American values of family, work, neighborhood, peace, and freedom. Speaking from the decks of the Kennedy, Reagan declared that Americans were “known around the world as a confident and happy people.”¹⁴ Writing in Time magazine, Lance Morrow proclaimed Reagan to be “a Prospero of American memories, a magician who carries a bright, ideal America like a holography in his mind and projects its image in the air.”¹⁵ Ronald Reagan was at his zenith.

The most remarkable event of that particular July 4 is that it happened at all. A decade earlier (almost to the day) Ronald Reagan challenged incumbent president Gerald R. Ford to a near draw in the Republican nominating contest. After a bitter convention floor fight, Ford won by a whisker, and Reagan withdrew, leaving with the words of an Irish ballad: “I will lay me down and bleed a while. Though I am wounded, I am not slain. I shall rise and fight again.”¹⁶ Despite Reagan’s promise of a political resurrection, his defeat was viewed by many as a last hurrah. The former California governor was discounted as a washed-up, ex-Hollywood actor who was intellectually lazy, spoke only from cue cards, and showed little grasp of policy. Gerald Ford disparaged him as “one of the few political leaders I have ever met whose public speeches revealed more than his private conversations,”¹⁷ and not “technically competent.” Said Ford: “[H]is knowledge of the budget, his knowledge of foreign policy—it was not up to the standards of either Democrat or Republican presidents. . .. I’ve talked to several foreign leaders who were shocked at his lack of detailed information.”¹⁸ Clark Clifford, who served on Harry Truman’s White House staff and later was Lyndon B. Johnson’s defense secretary, memorably called Reagan an “amiable dunce.”¹⁹ Even some Hollywood types thought Reagan was politically miscast. One movie mogul famously dismissed him, saying: “No, Jimmy Stewart for Governor. Reagan for best friend.”²⁰

Reagan’s intellectual laziness was highlighted by his repeating essentially the same speech that he began delivering to General Electric workers in the late 1950s. “The Speech,” as it came to be called, was filled with antigovernment bromides, including: “Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is this moment.”²¹

While some thought Ronald Reagan could do no harm as president—thanks to his intellectual laziness and his dependence on staff for support—others thought he posed a serious danger. Even some Republicans castigated Reagan as a divisive figure whose vehement anticommunism and bombastic statements would create a foreign policy debacle should he enter the Oval Office. In his 1976 primary fight with Ford, Reagan asserted that the Soviet Union “out-guns us, out-tanks us, and out-subs us.”²² Reagan warned that, unless there were huge increases in defense spending, “our nation is in great danger, and the danger grows with each passing day.”²³ Ford responded with a television advertisement in which a somber female voice warned: “Governor Reagan couldn’t start a war. President Reagan could.”²⁴ Another pro-Ford commercial was imbued with a sense of urgency:

When the Hot Line rings, who do you want to answer? And what do you want him to say? Do you want someone who talks like he wants to start a war, or someone who’ll stop one? Think about it. You’ve got ’til Tuesday.²⁵

Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff, believed Reagan’s bellicosity would haunt him in the general election, and so he cheered Reagan’s rise. In his diary, Jordan confided: “I thought Reagan’s very strength—his hold on the right wing of the Republican party—was also his vulnerability.”²⁶ Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin advised Reagan that “Jimmy Carter practices piranha politics—he eats his opponents alive.” Unseating Carter, Wirthlin warned, “will be extremely difficult, even unlikely.”²⁷

Reagan's Rise

Jimmy Carter made Ronald Reagan’s presidency possible. Carter had narrowly beaten Ford in 1976, partly by inventing something he called the “misery index”—a combination of unemployment and inflation rates. In 1976, the misery index stood at 12.5 percent; four years later it had risen to 20 percent.²⁸ Given these dismal figures, it was impossible for Carter to run on his record. Instead, his only hope was to frame the contest as a choice between a president with few achievements and an unprepared opponent who frightened people. For his part, Reagan was having none of it. Accepting the Republican nomination, he declared:

Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say, “Well done?” Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter administration took office with where we are today and say, “Keep up the good work?” Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, “Let’s have four more years of this?”²⁹

Even Patrick Caddell, Carter’s chief pollster, conceded that “there was no way we could survive if we allowed [the election] to become a referendum on the first three years of the Carter administration.”³⁰

Jimmy Carter helped make that referendum happen. In July 1979, Carter gave what became known as his “malaise speech.” In it, he proclaimed a “crisis of confidence”:

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.³¹

Ronald Reagan profoundly disagreed. Announcing his candidacy a few months later, he declared:

There are those in our land today . .. who would have us believe that the United States, like other great civilizations of the past, has reached the zenith of its power; that we are weak, fearful, reduced to bickering with each other and no longer possessed of the will to cope with our problems. Much of this talk has ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface: Why Republicans?
• Introduction: "I Can't Sell My Kids on This Party"
• 1 Zenith: Reagan's Triumph
• 2 Outmaneuvered and Angry: Bill Clinton and the Republicans
• 3 Outmanned: Barack Obama and a New Politics of Demography
• 4 A Conservative Imprisonment
• 5 Why the Republican Party Is Necessary
• Bibliography
• Index