THE RISE AND
FALL OF THE NEW CONSERVATIVES
Dave Thomas
Brian Mann, 2006, Welcome to the Homeland, A journey to the
Rural Heart of America’s Conservative Revolution
Alan Wolfe,
1998, One Nation, After All, What
Middle-Class Americans Really Think About
Gertrude
Himmelfarb, 1999, One Nation, Two
Cultures, A Searching Examination of American Society in the Aftermath of Our
Cultural Revolution
Brian Mann’s excellent book
describes the culture of rural areas, small towns and exurbs (suburbs farthest
from their cities), which he calls ‘Homelander’ Culture. These Homelanders include Traditional
Conservatives, Christian Conservatives and Libertarians. The following is primarily a summary of Brian
Mann’s book, which I strongly recommend
for its very readable analysis of how the Homelander minority has enabled the
New Conservatives to dominate our government. The other two books are much more tedious
explorations of the extent to which we have two cultures.
How
the Homelander Minority Gained Political Control
1. Our Constitutional Compromise
To obtain ratification of
our constitution by our 13 original states, a compromise was necessary which
gives less populated states the same number of senators as large ones and gives
them more electoral votes than their population alone would justify. In addition, our Senate rules require that
more than 60% of our senators must vote to stop filibusters. The result is that Senators representing rural
states with a very small proportion of our population have extra power and such
states also have more power in electing our president.
2. Homelander Organizing
By the nineteen eighties Democrats were demoralized by the Vietnam War,
inflations caused by unbalanced budgets and oil price inflation shocks, loss of
middle class manufacturing jobs due to technology and foreign competition,
stagnation of middle class incomes and white male reaction to increased
competition from women and blacks. This
demoralization was aggravated by increased divisive racial and gender
competition.
Beginning with Goldwater’s
1964 campaign, Republicans and Christian Conservative leaders organized
increasingly self conscious Homelanders to vote in greater numbers than
Democrats In a racist backlash against the Civil Rights legislation, the South
replaced Democratic with Republican legislators. Christian Conservative leaders and
Conservative radio commentators fueled a Culture of Resentment among
Homelanders.
Especially by Reagan’s
presidency, Conservatives perfected the art of framing, message discipline and
media control. Democrats became
defensive, seldom attacking as had previous Democrats such as Harry Truman.
3. Homelanders Capture the Republican Party
As more Southern and other
Homelanders became politically active, they increasingly dominated the
Republican Party. More conservative
Republican leaders were selected (from Nixon to Reagan to the second Bush, from
Michaels to Gingrich to Delay, from Dole to Lott to Frisk).
4. Republican Political Infrastructure and Discipline
Working with Conservative
think tanks, Gingrich created much Republican Infrastructure and enforced party
discipline. Many very Conservative
measures passed only due to support by 40 captive moderate Republicans. They were able to block or pass legislation
even though their majority in the house was never as great as that now held by
the Democrats.
5. Redistricting
After the 1990 census,
Republicans who controlled many state legislatures were able to redistrict so
as to concentrate Democratic votes in fewer districts, increasing the number of
districts with Republican majorities.
More recently, Tom Delay led a move to redistrict
6. Homelander Subsidies
Pork has been crucial to
Republican maintenance of their base. They have engineered the expenditure of
much more federal revenue in their rural districts than the taxes people in
these districts pay in. For all their
ideology of anti-government individualism, many rural areas would experience
even more rapid population declines without the jobs created by Republican
delivered pork.
7. ‘War on Terrorism’
Most recently, the ‘War on
Terrorism’ has been created and used by Conservatives to distract mainstream
American voters from domestic quality of life, safety net and financial issues,
on which they are Liberals and oppose Conservatives.
New Conservatives Barely Obtained
Control
Using all of the above
resources, New Conservatives (based largely upon Homelander support) gained
control of the house in 1994, the presidency in 2000 and senate in 2002. But they
were maximally stretched thin. Their
control of the senate was not enough to stop filibusters. They barely controlled the house, such that
they had to hold votes open to cajole enough members to pass some
legislation. Bush received only a
minority of votes in 2000 and barely obtained enough electoral votes in both
2000 and 2004 to prevail.
How the Homelander Minority Lost
Political Control
In our recent 2006
elections, after controlling the presidency and both houses of government for
only 4 years, the New Republicans lost both houses of congress. Democrats beat many Republican moderates in
the north and some more conservative Republicans elsewhere. Democrats barely won control of the senate, won control of the house by as large a
margin as Republicans have recently had, elected 6 additional governors and
took control or increased their control of many state legislatures.
The Republican deception,
incompetence and corruption (all three manifested in the Iraq War and Katrina)
could no longer be hidden as casualties were reported daily. Having tied the Iraq War to the ‘War on
Terror’, Bush’s attempt to rally voters to his leadership in the latter, only
reminded them of his failure on the former.
Democrats successfully related national and state Republican candidates
to Bush’s failures.
With Democrats in control of
both congressional houses, Republicans can no longer escape congressional
oversight, or set legislative agendas.
Nor use congressional rules to their advantage. Nor provide so much pork to their Homelander
base. Republicans are divided between
who realize that big government, deficits, subsidies for campaign contributors
and pork for constituents are necessary for maintaining their base and those
who think they should go back to conservative principles of small government and
balanced budgets.
Having already maximized
their election of Homelander candidates, Republicans can elect no more of
them. Without moderate Republicans, they
cannot obtain majorities. The Republican
Party will likely become more Conservative, not less. Unless Democrats pursue legislation for which
mainstream