Ford to Gingrich
Gerald Ford had been appointed Vice President under the terms of the 25th Amendment in December 1973 following Spiro Agnew’s resignation. When Ford assumed the presidency in August 1974 following Nixon’s resignation, and chose Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President some saw it as a resurgence of the moderate wing of the Republican party. Public outrage at Ford’s pardon of Nixon contributed to Republican congressional losses in the 1974 election, and affected conservatives more than moderates. But overall, in Geoffrey Kabaservice’s view, the events of the Nixon-Ford era negatively affected moderates. Republicans regarded them as traitors to the party; Ford’s appointment of Rockefeller energized conservative opposition without having much effect on moderate political engagement. In the aftermath of Watergate, moderates disengaged from politics while conservatives organized to battle the Equal Rights Amendment. Moderates cut back on political donations or directed them to nominally nonpartisan but functionally progressive organizations. Conservative businessmen such as Joseph Coors, Richard Scaife, John Olin, and the Koch brothers invested in think tanks and grassroots organizations to promote their political points of view.
Ronald Reagan’s announcement in November 1975 that he would challenge Ford for the presidential nomination had the effect of pushing Ford to the right. In 1964 Republican party officials in California had convinced Reagan, then mostly retired from acting, to film a speech supporting Barry Goldwater. The speech which came to be known as “A Time for Choosing,” is widely regarded as having launched Reagan’s political career. The speech tied together anti-Communism, so-called “small government,” and a disdain for “elites.”
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
Reagan identified social programs with “socialism,” suggesting that they would lead to the kind of totalitarianism the US had been fighting around the world. Endorsing Goldwater’s slogan “peace through strength,” Reagan implied Carter’s foreign policy was weak. “Should Christ have refused the cross?” Reagan asked.
In 1966, with images of police breaking up student protests at Berkeley, and later the Watts riots in Los Angeles fresh in the minds of Californians, Reagan ran for Governor and was elected with 77% of the vote. Despite attempts to recall him as governor in 1968 Reagan was re-elected in 1970. His tenure was characterized by contrasts between rhetoric and reality. He raised fees, slashed construction budgets, and fired luminaries in the state university system, yet increased spending on education overall. He railed against “the welfare state,” government taxation and regulation of the economy, yet increased welfare payments to some segments of the population.
As Reagan began his second term as governor, Southern California evangelicals helped promote speculation that Reagan might lead the “Republican Right” to national prominence. Conservatives from across the nation joined in. There was a growing anti-government – and particularly anti-liberal public sentiment deriving from perceived failures of liberalism across both major political parties. The list of supposed wrongs reached back to John F. Kennedy’s failure to challenge the USSR regarding construction of the Berlin Wall; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the War on Poverty during the Johnson administration which led Southern Democrats to leave the Democratic Party; the failure of both parties to “stay the course” in Vietnam, i.e. to pursue military victory despite domestic and international criticism and obstacles; the embarrassment of the Watergate affair during the Nixon administration and Ford’s signing of the Helsinki Accords, which were blamed on their supposed liberalism.
Whether Rockefeller declined to run for VP in 1976 or Ford dropped him, Kansas Senator Bob Dole became Ford’s running mate. Ford (narrowly) defeated Reagan for the nomination and went on to run against Jimmy Carter who (narrowly) defeated Ford in the general election. Reagan’s near victory at the Republican convention was evidence of the conservative movement’s power within the Republican party, and ability to energize voters. It also demonstrated that so-called “binding” state primaries, in which delegates are directed to vote at the party convention for the candidate who won the primary, favored conservatives, as right-wing factions were able to control low-turnout primaries.
The Carter presidency was plagued by economic stagflation, an oil crisis, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran hostage situation. In November 1979, three days after the US embassy in Iran was taken over by student revolutionaries, Senator Edward (“Ted”) Kennedy of Massachusetts, brother of assassinated former President John F. Kennedy, announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. For the remainder of the campaign the Democratic party was deeply divided, although Carter retained pledged delegates and won the nomination.
The 60s and 70s exhibited a pattern in which Republican candidates in successive elections would be replaced by candidates farther to the right on the political spectrum, who would then moderate their positions faced with pragmatic realities of governing, and then be replaced by candidates still farther to the right in the next election. This happened after 1964, as state and local organizations remained under the control of Goldwaterites despite his loss. The pragmatic Goldwaterites were initially replaced by more conservative Reaganites, who a decade or so later would be replaced by members of the Tea Party.
The 70s (1974 to be precise) also mark the point at which the infamous Laffer Curve began its influence on Republican economic policy. Positing that reducing taxes would increase revenue, Laffer’s now discredited theory initially appeared to justify the Republican penchant for lowering taxes. The Reagan era Economic Recovery Act of 1981, which implemented a 25% reduction in marginal tax rates for individuals, had the opposite effect of what Laffer predicted, reducing revenue by 9 percent. Compensatory tax increases followed in 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1987, undoing about half of the original tax reductions, but failing to restore revenue to its earlier level.
In the lead-up to the 1980 presidential election Illinois congressman John Anderson initially joined the Republican primary, but withdrew and ran as an independent when the Republican platform didn’t support the Equal Rights Amendment, which Anderson did. Eventual Republican nominee Ronald Reagan chose erstwhile moderate George H.W. Bush as his running mate, but in further evidence of the conservative takeover of the party, Bush renounced his moderate view on abortion and his criticism of supply-side economics. Reagan’s nomination was the culmination of the “Southern strategy,” and GOP minority outreach essentially stopped. Shortly before launching his general election campaign Reagan gave a speech at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, MS, where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964, in which he promoted “states rights” – the doctrine widely referenced in the South in support of segregation.
Conservative Reagan’s nomination as Republican party standard bearer, combined with moderate John Anderson’s leaving the party to run as an independent seemed to many observers to cement the polarization of political parties into liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, an outcome that Kabaservice characterizes as having been “sought by conservatives for decades.”
In the spring of 1980, Robert Grant, chair of the Christian Voice lobby, had established Christians for Reagan, and launched a direct mail campaign that questioned Edward Kennedy’s position on abortion, Jimmy Carter’s position on “gay rights,” and George H.W. Bush’s position on prayer in public schools. That August Televangelist James Robison and businessman Ed McAteer organized a “National Affairs Briefing” at the national meeting of the Religious Roundtable in Dallas. President Jimmy Carter, embroiled in the Iran hostage crisis at the time, declined to attend, but Republican candidate Reagan accepted. In his speech Reagan exhorted his audience to vote.
If you do not speak your mind and cast your ballots, then who will speak and work for the ideals we cherish? Who will vote to protect the American family and respect its interest in the formulation of public policy? … When you stand up for your values, when you assert your civil rights to vote and to participate fully in government, you’re defending our true heritage of religious liberty.
Much has changed since the Constitution guaranteed all Americans their religious liberty, but some things must never change. The perils our country faces today and will face in the 1980s seem unprecedented in their scope and consequences; but our response to them can be the response of men and women in any era who seek divine guidance in the policies of their government and the promulgation of their laws. When the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, they were told that their government and laws must be models to other nations, showing to the world the wisdom and mercy of their God. To us, as to the ancient People of The Promise, there is given an opportunity: a chance to make our laws and government not only a model to mankind, but a testament to the wisdom and mercy of God.
The speech received a raucous standing ovation. While the gathering had supposedly been bipartisan, in the aftermath it was clear that the crowd identified with Reagan. Reagan carried what Darren Dochuk calls the message of “Jefferson and Jesus” through the last weeks of the campaign, locking up the Sunbelt as Nixon had done in 1972. Carter sought to connect Reagan’s message to bigotry and extremism, but apparently Reagan’s evangelical alliances helped his states-rights message land as postracial populism. Reagan’s clincher may have been his now famous line in a televised debate that October, when he asked his audience “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Reagan and running mate George H.W. Bush went on to beat Carter and Mondale by 10 percentage points in the popular vote, and received a massive 489 electoral votes. The election is widely considered a realignment. It evidenced the rising political power of the Sunbelt, but also of suburbs where late shifts in support away from Independent candidate John B. Anderson benefited Reagan. Carter’s voter support was the worst for an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover; Republicans gained 53 seats in the House of Representatives and 12 in the Senate, giving them their first Senate majority since 1954.
By 1984 Congressional Quarterly estimated that House Republicans who scored near the top of its measure of conservatism had gone from one half to two thirds, and only Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut qualified as progressive. Reagan’s 1984 campaign was largely devoid of concrete policy proposals, his handlers apparently having determined that conservative proposals such as privatizing Medicare, abolishing the Departments of Energy and Education, and limiting access to abortions were broadly unpopular. Reagan won the presidential election in a landslide, but like Nixon in 1972 the victory largely did not extend to Congress. Republicans lost two seats in the Senate and although they picked up 16 seats in the House, Democrats retained their majority (also winning the popular vote for the House).
In the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986, funds from arms sales to Iran were secretly diverted to fund the “Contra” rebels in Nicaragua who were fighting the socialist Sandinista government, which Reagan had targeted as part of his worldwide quest to eliminate Communism. Iran was at war with Iraq at the time, but was also holding American hostages in Lebanon. Lebanese journal Al-Shiraa published an expose prompting public denials from Reagan, which he quickly retracted. Although the Tower Commission appointed by Reagan to investigate the matter did not find evidence linking him directly to the scheme, his popularity suffered temporarily. Republicans subsequently lost control of the Senate, but Reagan left office with the highest approval rating of any president since Roosevelt.
The Republican establishment was initially skeptical of George H.W. (“Poppy”) Bush, who conservatives distrusted because of his patrician pedigree and moderates distrusted because he had abandoned principles to run as Reagan’s VP. In the 1988 election Bush’s appointment of Dan “Potatoe” Quayle as his running mate was a sop to the conservatives. More important was campaign manager Lee Atwater’s gaslighting media campaign featuring William J. (“Willie”) Horton, Jr., who had committed sexual assault while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison during Dukakis’ term as governor. The furlough program had been established during the administration of Dukakis’ predecessor, Republican Francis Sargent, but – as psychologist and Washington observer Dr. Bryant Welch notes in State of Confusion, his survey of gaslighting in political communications – what mattered were the associations that the ad conjured in the mind of the viewer.
Welch suggests that the point of the ad was not even really the overt negative message that Dukakis was “soft on crime.” The point was to associate Dukakis with the image of “a powerful potent black male forcibly having sex with a white woman.” Notably, while Atwater was Bush’s director of political strategy, the ad production was supervised by Roger Ailes, who had worked on the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, and was credited with having improved Reagan’s ho-hum debate performance.
“Poppy” Bush defeated Dukakis in the general election, making him the first sitting vice president to win the presidency since Martin Van Buren in 1836, but Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress. The nasty campaign exacerbated the exodus of moderates from the Republican party.
“Poppy” Bush’s tenure was notable for establishing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Bush inherited a deficit of more than $150 billion from the Reagan administration, which had also saddled the Bush administration with the Graham-Rudman-Hollings act, which called for automatic domestic spending cuts if the federal budget was not in balance. Bush invoked the ire of his party’s conservative faction when he reneged on his “no new taxes” promise, and agreed to an economic package that included a range of actions including some spending cuts, but also tax increases.
Despite the fact that Reagan had increased taxes 11 times during his administration, conservatives regarded Bush’s action as a betrayal. Bush was also criticized within the party for leaving the Gulf War without removing Saddam Hussein from power. In the 1992 presidential primaries he was challenged from the right by political commentator Pat Buchanan. Wealthy Texas businessman Ross Perot mounted a third party campaign, and polled well in June 1992, but in the end won no electoral votes. His campaign is recognized as one of the first attempts to use electronic media to communicate directly with the American people, bypassing political parties, establishment media, and Congress. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton won the electoral vote, but received less than 50% of the popular vote, making him the first “minority president” since Richard Nixon. Nonetheless, his victory broke the Republicans’ 12-year streak controlling the White House.
Gingrich
Ironically one of the last significant impacts the moderate faction had on the Republican party was in 1989 when they helped elect Rep. Newt Gingrich, GA, House Republican whip. Despite his early association with the moderate/progressive Ripon Society, and his support for Nelson Rockefeller in 1968, Gingrich famously went on to embrace conservatism, founding the Conservative Opportunity Society, won praise from Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, fostered two government shutdowns, and created the infamous Contract with America.
As chronicled by political scientists Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann in their 2012 book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, from his earliest days in the House in the 70s Gingrich had the goal of establishing a Republican majority in Congress. His strategy was a variation on “destroying the institution in order to save it.” His method was to unite congressional Republicans in obstructing Democrats’ proposals, while attacking Democrats in the media as responsible for and benefiting from Congress as a corrupt institution. In the early days many Republicans were disturbed by Gingrich’s methods. One who notably was not was Rep. Dick Cheney.
The establishment of the Conservative Opportunity Society represented an expansion of Gingrich’s influence. In 1984 Gingrich initiated a media campaign for attacking Democrats. C-SPAN cameras had been installed in the House in 1978, but were in fixed positions focused on speakers in an attempt to prevent their political exploitation. Gingrich saw that the fixed cameras meant that the viewing audience couldn’t tell that the speakers were addressing an empty chamber. Gingrich and his cohorts began regular evening presentations “attacking Democrats for opposing school prayer, being soft on Communism, and being corrupt.” Speakers would adjust their position so as to appear to be addressing Democrats in the House, and their apparent failure to respond could be interpreted by viewers as apathy or unwillingness to counter the charges.
Gingrich’s antics goaded then Speaker of the House, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill into reprimanding Gingrich personally while the House was in session – a violation of House rules. The upshot was that Gingrich, whose nighttime tirades and those of his allies had been covered only by C-SPAN, suddenly received network attention as the three major news outlets aired brief segments with him and Speaker O’Neill. “I am now a famous person,” Gingrich quipped to a reporter at the time.
Gingrich continued his media incitement, amplifying charges that O’Neill’s successor as Speaker, Jim Wright of Texas, had unethical business dealings, which eventually led to Wright’s resignation. Then, in a typical Gingrich maneuver, he helped engineer a populist uproar concerning a pay raise for members of Congress, which was in fact the result of a bi-partisan agreement that Gingrich himself had supported.
Next Gingrich and crew generated populist outrage over House financial procedures. The House operated an internal bank that held members’ paychecks pending transfer to other financial institutions. The House bank had its own check that members could use, and it was not unusual for members to have overdrafts. As Ornstein and Mann write, “Since the only money in the bank was from the pay of all the lawmakers, the overdrafts were not misusing taxpayer money….” But the appearance of spendthrifty elected officials with banking privileges not available to the average citizen was another cause for resentment. (Gingrich himself had twenty-two overdrafts.)
In another ironic twist, the Democratic party’s sweep of House, Senate, and White House in 1992 helped rather than hindered Gingrich’s quest for a Republican congressional majority. With Democrats in control of legislative and executive branches of government for the first time in 12 years, Gingrich was able to convince his fellow Republicans in Congress to oppose any Clinton administration initiatives. Ornstein and Mann compare this modus to that of a minority party in a parliamentary system. In a pattern that has essentially continued to the present day, Democrats in Congress had to find votes exclusively within their own membership in order to pass any legislation. Predictably the result was delays in passing even important bills, and a public image of Congress as a “broken system.” “That sense,” say Mann and Ornstein, “was just what Gingrich and his allies wanted to cultivate.”
Republicans gained fifty-two congressional seats in the 1994 midterm elections, and first House majority in forty years.
Mann and Ornstein:
Gingrich deserves a dubious kind of credit for many of the elements that have produced the current state of politics. He crystallized the approach of crafting a cohesive, parliamentary-style minority party and using it as a battering ram to stymie and damage a president of the other party. By moving to paint with a broad brush his own institution as elitist, corrupt, and arrogant, he undermined basic public trust in Congress and government. His attacks on partisan adversaries in the White House and Congress created a norm in which colleagues with different views became mortal enemies.
Gingrich resigned the speakership in 1998 after an ad blitz he engineered to try to use the Clinton impeachment to political advantage in the congressional elections backfired. Over time he transformed into what Mann and Ornstein call “what now passes for a conventional right-wing populist.” He ran for president in 2011, became a Trump booster, and is apparently an adviser to current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Although the Gingrich-led government shutdowns did not achieve their nominal goals (cuts in Medicare and other domestic spending), it was during that time in November 1995, when many government workers were on furlough, that Clinton began the infamous affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The affair led to Clinton’s impeachment, but the Senate did not convict. Clinton won re-election in 1996 and left office at the end of his second term with a 60% popular approval rating. Despite accomplishing what were nominally conservative goals such as reining in federal welfare for the poor Bill Clinton and wife Hillary remained polarizing figures. As Geoffrey Kabaservice notes, this was the result not just of Bill Clinton’s personal behavior, but the rise of conservative media, including the likes of Rush Limbaugh.