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The disintegration of a Grand Old Party

The abdication began, I proffer, with its wholehearted adoption of the Nixonian “Southern Strategy” which finally did away with the two conflicting factions of the GOP, a moderate one centered American political in the north- eastern United States and to some extent, the mid-western states, comprised of individuals who were roughly aligned with Nelson Rockefeller, Dwight Eisenhower and Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of our 41^st and 43^rd president, respectively. The “moderates” generally – operative word is “generally” – supported FDR’s New Deal programs, including regulation and welfare, and very strong supporters of civil rights, balanced budgets and relatively high tax levels to keep the budget balanced. They sought long-term economic growth through entrepreneurships, not tax cuts. In state politics, they believed in the importance of state colleges and universities, low tuition, and large research budgets. They stressed the importance of infrastructure improvements, as highway projects and the building and maintenance of bridges. In foreign policy they were internationalists, and anti-Communists. Countering that ideology was, in that wing’s view best accomplished by sponsoring economic growth (through foreign aid), maintaining a strong military, and keeping close ties to multinational organizations. Those Republicans had an open tent philosophy, free of hate, open to ideas and challenges.

The other group, the “Goldwater-Reagan” Republicans emerged, energized by Barry Goldwater in 1964. It was and is based predominately in the southern and western United States. The primary cause for dissatisfaction was the insistence of Lyndon Johnson to pass far reaching civil rights laws. It had been ten years since he Supreme Court had ruled that segregated schools were not, by their nature, separate but equal. Lyndon Johnson, who had been devoting most of his energy and attention to the war in Vietnam was fully aware that the Democrats would likely lose the south, but, felt that it was a moral imperative that the groundbreaking civil rights voting laws be passed and implemented regardless of the political cost.

In the 1970’s, Kevin Phillips, now ironically a harsh critic of the modern GOP which he had a major role in creating, articulated a concept that the Republicans could emerge from its internal struggles by polarizing voters in connection with civil rights. The theory was that the Republicans would lose the bulk of minority (i.e., black) voters but would gain advantages by appealing to disaffected whites. And it worked; the moderate wing of the party was virtually eliminated.

There were some lapses in the ascendancy of the Reagan faction of the Republican Party, notably at the time of the Watergate affair and the forced resignation of Richard Nixon, but by and large, the newly focused GOP never turned back. When Ronald Reagan made his speech to kick off his 1980 campaign near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where 16 years before three civil rights had been murdered, he proclaimed support for "states' rights" it was clear that the Republicans had fully adopted a policy of separation, divisiveness and exclusion.

At this point, the majority of Americans had accepted, to a greater or lesser extent, the concept of the equality of all persons under the law; accordingly, “code
 words were used to mask bigotry. “States rights” meant a weakened Federal government that would enforce anti-segregation laws and promote integration. Reagan’s speech in Mississippi sounded the alarm. Ronald Reagan continued

 

 

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger".

 

 

 

 

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