Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (88 page)

Walker on “freedom”
: John Harwood, “10 Questions with Scott Walker,”
cnbc.com
(September 1, 2015),
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/01/10-questions-with-scott-walker.html
.

His “Make Life Work” address
: Representative Eric Cantor, “Make Life Work,” delivered February 5, 2013.

“George it’s called management”
: Carl M. Cannon, “Stupid Is as Stupid Says,”
RealClearPolitics
(September 13, 2015),
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/13/stupid_is_as_stupid_says_128055.html
.

“We are led” and “Look at that face!”
: quoted in Cannon.

Trump quotations
: “This country is a hellhole”: quoted in “Trump’s America” (editorial),
Economist
(September 5, 2015); “a third world country”: YouTube (June 16, 2015),
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=elTq6VZdaQQ&autoplay=1
; “the hedge fund people make a lot of money”: “Donald Trump: Tax the Rich More,”
CNN Money
(August 28, 2015),
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/27/news/economy/donald-trump-economy-tax-plan/
; “I will protect your social security”: Sahil Kapur, “How Donald Trump Is Winning Over Anti-Wall Street Republicans,”
Bloomberg Politics
(September 1, 2015),
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-01/how-donald-trump-is-winning-over-anti-wall-street-republicans
; “controlled by lobbyists”: Daniel Strauss, “Donald Trump’s New Pitch: I’m So Rich I Can’t Be Bought,”
Politico
(July 28, 2015),
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/donald-trumps-so-rich-i-cant-be-bought-120743
; CEO pay “a joke”: “Trump Says CEO Pay Is Disgraceful a Joke,” Reuters (September 13, 2015),
http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKL1N11J0DQ20150913?irpc=932
.

CNN/ORC Poll available at i2.cdn.turner.com.

For Perry and Romney on Trump and links to their statements, see E. J. Dionne Jr., “Trump Has the GOP Establishment’s Number,”
Washington Post
(July 22, 2015),
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-the-gops-number/2015/07/22/60ec49e6-309d-11e5-8353-1215475949f4_story.html
.

Walker on Trump plan being “similar to his
: Daniel Strauss, “Scott Walker: Trump and I Have Similar Immigration Proposals,”
Politico
(August 17, 2015),
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/scott-walker-donald-trump-similar-immigration-policies-121445
; Cruz “I like Trump”: Tim Mak, “Cruz, Trump in Secret Talks,”
The Daily Beast
(August 19, 2015),
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/19/ted-cruz-s-secret-trump-strategy.html
.

Trump on the silent majority and law and order
: Steve Benen, “Trump Claims to Champion ‘Silent Majority,’ ” MSNBC, July 13, 2015; James Hohmann, “Trump, in Tennessee, Downplays Police Brutality, Promises to Get Rid of Gangs,”
Washington Post
, August 29, 2015.

Trump’s supporters: Dan Balz and Scott Clement, “Poll: Trump, Carson Top GOP Race; Clinton Leads Dems but Support Drops,”
Washington Post
, September 14, 2015.

Douthat on Trump
: Ross Douthat, “Donald Trump, Traitor to His Class,”
New York Times
, August 29, 2015. See also Ross Douthat, “Trump, Taxes and the G.O.P.,”
New York Times
, August 31, 2015.

“Conservative reformism is conservative”
: Reihan Salam, “Conservative Reformism is Conservative,”
National Review
, May 28, 2013.

Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute
: Mike Konczal, “The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity,”
Atlantic
, March 24, 2014.

16. UP FROM GOLDWATERISM

“Moderation will be stigmatized”
: Edmund Burke,
Reflections on the Revolution in France
(London: J. Dodsley, 1793), p. 361.

“I would remind you”
: Barry Goldwater, speech in acceptance of the Republican nomination for president, July 16, 1964.

For an excellent, brisk account of Moynihan and Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, see Stephen Hess,
The Professor and the President
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015); see also Greg Weiner,
American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015), pp. 76–79.

He fulfilled his pledge
: Glen Sussman and Bryon W. Daynes,
George W. Bush: Evaluating the President at Midterm
ed. Bryan Hilliard, Tom Lansford, and Robert P. Watson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), p. 55.

Clinton’s mantra
: President Bill Clinton, address regarding the government shutdown, November 14, 1995.

The turn to compassionate conservatism
: Ben James Taylor, “The ‘Big Society’ and the Politics of Paternalism: Edmund Burke’s Influence on the Government Is Clear,” London School of Economics and Political Science, June 24, 2013.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/edmund-burke-the-big-society-and-the-politics-of-paternalism/
.

partisanship increasingly influences
: Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster, “All Politics Is National: The Rise of Negative Partisanship and the Nationalization of U.S. House and Senate Elections in the 21 Century,” paper for the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 2015.

An excellent early example of a liberal contrasting Burkean conservatism with the new right that began rising in the United States in 1950s is Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s “The Politics of Nostalgia,” published in 1955. It is reprinted in Schlesinger,
The Politics of Hope
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 72–80.

Ibid, President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address, 1996.

“A law might be here advanced”
: Irving Howe,
Steady Work: Essays in the Politics of Democratic Radicalism 1953–1966
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), p. 224.

“There’s very little we can do”
: Jonathan Chait, “How the White House Learned to Be Liberal,”
New York
, March 8, 2015.

The idea of transcending partisan differences
: Paul Starr and Robert Kuttner, “What We Know Now,”
American Prospect,
Spring 2015, p. 5.

outline a full-scale economic program
: Lawrence H. Summers, Ed Balls, et al., “Report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity,” Center for American Progress, January 15, 2015; Joseph E. Stiglitz et al., “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Share Prosperity,” Roosevelt Institute, May 2015.

a campaign kickoff speech
: “Hillary Clinton Campaign Rally Speech Transcript,”
Politico
, June 13, 2015,
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-campaign-rally-speech-transcript-118973.html.

“Democrats,” Greenberg argued, “have not addressed”
: Stanley B. Greenberg, “A New Formula for a Real Democratic Majority,”
American Prospect,
Spring 2015, pp. 66–70.

Obama’s best moments
: President Barack Obama, “Our March Is Not Yet Finished,” address in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015.

“Unfortunately for Republicans”
: Whit Ayres, “A Daunting Demographic Challenge for the GOP in 2016,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 4, 2015. He offered a similar argument in an interview with me.

Latinos have been among
: Michael Oleaga, “Obamacare News Today: Latinos Increasingly Favor Affordable Care Act, Likely to Influence Election 2016,”
Latin Post
, April 18, 2015.

“beware of false prophets”
: John Boenher, “Face the Nation Transcripts Sept. 27: Boehner, Sanders & Kasich,” CBS News website (September 27, 2015),
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-september-27-boehner-sanders-kasich/
.

“It has been a group effort”
: Quoted in Clinton Rossiter,
Conservatism in America
2nd ed., revised (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 193.

“utterly contemptuous”
: John B. Judis,
William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 136.

Goldwater singled out Modern Republicanism
: Barry Goldwater,
The Conscience of a Conservative
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 7.

“Now we have as much government”
: Arthur Larson,
A Republican Looks at His Party
(1956; reprint, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), p. 10.

In a 1955 speech
: Gabriel Hauge, “The Economics of Eisenhower Conservatism,” speech at The Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, California (October 14, 1955). Thanks to John Hauge for pointing me to this speech and making it available.

“the military-industrial complex”
: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961.

“in a moment of exasperation”
: William Galston, “Why I Miss President Eisenhower,”
New Republic
, January 20, 2011.

share of GDP
: “The U.S. Economy from Presidents Eisenhower to Carter,” Macrohistory and World Timeline,
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch37-econ1d.htm
.

Ike also won 39 percent
: Election Polls—Vote by Groups, 1952–1956, Gallup,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/9451/election-polls-vote-groups-19521956.aspx
.

“[t]he New Deal regime”
: Greg Weiner,
American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015), p. 132.

“Unlike most GOP activists in 1952”
: Joe Scarborough,
The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Conservatives Once Mastered Politics—and Can Again
(New York: Random House, 2013), p. xv.

religious conservatives felt betrayed
: Laura Meckler and Ana Campoy, “Arkansas Governor Calls for Changes to ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 1, 2015.

“Neither a wise man”
: “Foreign Policy: Ike,”
Time
, October 6, 1952.

It took time for academia and large parts of the journalistic world to take conservatism seriously. By way of underscoring liberal blindness to their very existence, conservatives are fond of citing the observation of Lionel Trilling, the great literary critic, in 1954. “In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition,” Trilling wrote in
The Liberal Imagination
. “For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.”

Yet Trilling had a point: conservatism
was
largely marginalized in the academy and the intellectual world at the time he wrote, and New Deal ideas were still dominant in politics. William F. Buckley Jr. founded
National Review
a year later precisely to fill the void on the right that Trilling described. Why else would a magazine declare that it “stands athwart history, yelling Stop”?

Conservatism was, in fact, much stronger in the mid-1950s than either Trilling or Buckley allowed. But it took years for scholarship and journalism to catch up with what was happening. The rise of Ronald Reagan was the break point, a kind of shock to the system. Since 1980, there has been an outpouring of fine writing and research on conservative politics and conservative ideas. I have drawn, with gratitude, on this good work. While I have cited much of this work in my text and have included extensive notes to make my debts as clear as possible, I thought it useful to highlight books that were especially important to me in writing this one and also to include works that I did not draw on directly but influenced my understanding over the years. Some of them might be of interest to those who want to explore different aspects of the rich conservative story, and my accounting includes books that offer points of view very different from my own. I would underscore that this brief essay does not cover all the works I cite, and it is by no means exhaustive. For brevity’s sake, I have only included subtitles where I felt they were important in identifying the subject of a book.

At the outset, I honor conservative magazines that were essential to this work, particularly
National Review,
the
Weekly Standard, National Affairs,
the
Public Interest, Commentary
, and the
American Conservative
. I cannot cite all of the political journalists and bloggers who regularly enlighten me. On the progressive side, Jonathan Chait, Greg Sargent, Jonathan Cohn, Steve Benen, Joan Walsh, Paul Waldman, Tim Noah, Greg Dworkin and his colleagues at
Daily Kos
, and Ed Kilgore are a few of the legion of bloggers and political writers I have relied on.
National Review
’s “The Corner” and its political writers, particularly Ramesh Ponnuru, provide a constant flow of opinion and insight into conservative thinking. Others who have been helpful include
RedState.Com
;
HotAir.com
,
particularly Ed Morrissey; Jennifer Rubin; and Hugh Hewitt. Three now-defunct libertarian magazines,
New Individualist Review,
the
Libertarian Review,
and
Inquiry
, are lively sources on that movement’s origins and development. The volumes produced from the transcripts of the quadrennial campaign managers’ conferences organized since 1972 by the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard are an exceptional source of postelection insight on presidential contests.

I leaned regularly on the very informative websites Vox, The Upshot at the
New York Times, The Atlantic,
and Wonkblog at the
Washington Post,
particularly Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, David Leonhardt, Emma Green, and Chris Ingraham.