Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (77 page)

In political terms, Eisenhower’s victories were national in scope and he made large inroads into traditionally Democratic constituencies, including Catholics, Jews, and working-class voters. The South began to drift toward the Republicans under Eisenhower—he carried Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia—but his strategy for winning the South did not focus on racial reaction. On the contrary, while carrying those southern states,
Ike also won 39 percent of the nonwhite vote. Eisenhower did not have a Southern Strategy. He had a national strategy.

Reading Eisenhower back into the conservative tradition is not a magical solution to what ails the American right, and he is not an infallible guide, especially in his attitude toward the deportation of immigrants. But reengaging Eisenhower is a necessary first step toward opening the conservative mind, sparking the conservative imagination, and restoring moderation as a conservative virtue. Eisenhower shows that in the postwar period, there was another way to be conservative, Republican, and successful. He proposed a far less polarizing approach to governing, to political foes, and to electoral victory. Eisenhower’s conservatism rejected the radicalism entailed in promises to overthrow the country’s inheritance from the New Deal. Here, too, is a lesson for conservatives. Writing of our time, the political theorist Greg Weiner noted that
“[t]he New Deal regime has been an integral part of American society for more than seventy-five years,” while the Great Society has “extended
its reach into American institutions for fifty—more than a fifth of US constitutional history. It is here. Expectations have formed around it.” The conservative tradition that evolved from Burke does not have to “acquiesce” to this order, Weiner wrote, but it should certainly “approach its modification with a degree of caution and regard.” In his 2013 book
The Right Path
, Joe Scarborough explicitly praised Eisenhower for traits many movement conservatives saw as grave sins.
“Unlike most GOP activists in 1952,” Scarborough wrote, “Eisenhower knew that no conservative president—no matter his popularity—would be able to eliminate Social Security and a bevy of other popular New Deal programs. It was a political pragmatism that frustrated conservatives like William F. Buckley, but it was a shrewd approach embraced even by the likes of Margaret Thatcher three decades later.”

There is something strange about the linkage of the words “conservative” and “revolutionary” and something decidedly unconservative about trying to break with three-quarters of a century of our history. A conservatism that accepted the responsibility of conserving the genuine achievements of progressive reform would be truer to its own tradition than a form of reaction dedicated to rooting out all vestiges of the liberal governance that shaped the America that exists now.

And this goes to the larger conservative problem. Many contemporary conservatives have trouble being at home in the raucous, pluralistic, multicultural country that has come into being during precisely the period when their creed moved right. Obama inspired opposition not just for what he did but for who he was and what he represented. It was not only that he was the first African-American president, but also the son of a Kenyan immigrant and a white mother who spent his youth in Hawaii and Indonesia—and was raised in part by grandparents from Kansas. He embodied diversity, and combined this with an Ivy League education and a cosmopolitan worldview.

Obama
was
different from what Americans have been used to in their president. He leads a changing country, and his coalition represents this change: young, multicultural, multiracial, urban, and near-suburban. It links some of the poorest Americans with educated professionals.

The problem for conservatives is that their distance from the new America has made many in their ranks sour about America itself—not the abstract ideal of the America they celebrate but the actual, living America of
the early twenty-first century. This, in turn, has created a deep pessimism in a movement that reached its high point in the glow of Ronald Reagan’s radiant optimism. As an electoral matter, angry pessimism rarely triumphs. As a disposition for governing, it will neither unite nor inspire.

The currently dominant brand of conservatism is still rooted in the fusionism of Buckley and Frank Meyer, a marriage of traditionalism and free-market economics. In recent years, fusionism has taken the form of an alliance between social and religious conservatives, right-leaning libertarians and business interests, financed increasingly by David Frum’s “radical rich.” Only once since 1992 has this alliance produced a popular vote majority in a presidential election, a narrow one for George W. Bush in 2004 that was powered more by national security concerns in the wake of 9/11 than by the country’s ideological mood.

The fusionist coalition is fraying, and it blew apart dramatically in the spring of 2015 when Indiana passed a “religious freedom” law that effectively opened the way for discrimination against gays and lesbians. To the shock of the measure’s supporters, who saw it as a relatively painless way to satisfy religious conservatives, the bill created an uproar. In a sign of how deeply gay rights and marriage equality were becoming embedded in mainstream American life, both Indiana and Arkansas, which passed a similar bill, came under intense pressure from businesses ranging from Apple to Wal-Mart to repeal or dilute it. Within days, Republican governors in both states reversed themselves, fearing that keeping the law on the books would lead to business and tourist boycotts.

The episode hurt the Republican Party’s image outside the ranks of religious conservatives, particularly among younger voters who strongly support gay rights. But the
religious conservatives felt betrayed by politicians who had caved in to pressure from those whom Gary Bauer, a leading social conservative, called “corporate insiders.” It will not be the last fight of this sort.

Conservatism thus faces twin challenges. It must modernize on cultural issues lest it lose the next generation and continue facing hostility from educated professionals. Yet as the 2012 election showed, it also has reason to fear defections—if not always to the Democrats then to abstention—from working-class voters who do not see their interests represented by conservative politicians who spend so much of their energy advocating tax cuts for the wealthy and
regulatory relief for business. For less affluent voters who have up to now supported Republicans, social issues will not be enough—and, as the Indiana episode showed, Republicans will find it increasingly problematic to deliver on their conservative social promises.

Earlier, I noted that the two poles of the party’s challenge were embodied in two failed but instructive candidacies in 2012. Jon Huntsman was the upscale candidate of cultural modernization. Rick Santorum was the candidate of working-class social conservatives. Huntsman and Santorum, it would seem, point Republicans and conservatives in opposite directions. But in another sense, each suggests ways in which conservatives must seek a more moderate path. Huntsman’s campaign was based on defanging the social issues and moving away from polarization. Santorum—like the reformist thinkers Henry Olsen, Ross Douthat, and Reihan Salam—was telling Republicans that their near-total focus on the interests of “job creators” and the very wealthy was leading them to ignore the concerns of the working-class voters who were essential to their electoral victories. Donald Trump’s initial success in rallying less-affluent Republicans by speaking out against unfair distributions of both economic and political power underscored the urgency of this task.

A turn toward moderation and an embrace of those who have been left-out—these are the tasks essential to the conservative future.

Conservatives rightly revere those who came before us, but they will not prosper if they continue to yearn for a past they will never be able to call back to life. They may win some elections, but they will not govern effectively on the basis of an ideology rooted in the struggles of a half-century ago. They will not succeed if they celebrate only the America that once was, not the vibrant nation that is being born. In his homely but direct way, Eisenhower put the challenge to conservatives of every generation plainly: “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” This generation of conservatives must be willing to face the future with confidence, and with hope.

My first thanks go to a group of conservative and Republican politicians, thinkers, strategists, and writers who agreed to long conversations with me when I set out to write this book. The people I spoke with knew I was a liberal trying to understand what had happened to the American right—and also knew they were unlikely to convert me to their cause. All were forthcoming, generous with their time, and candid not only about their hopes for their movement but also about the difficulties it faces. They helped me see nuances and complexities I might otherwise have missed (although I am sure I missed some anyway).

So my gratitude to Whit Ayres, Haley Barbour, Jim Brulte, Pat Buchanan, Dave Camp, Mike Castle, Chris Chocola, Ed Crane, Tom Davis, David Frum, Michael Gerson, Kevin Hassett, Doug Holtz-Eakin, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Raoul Labrador, Steve LaTourette, Yuval Levin, Mick Mulvaney, Grover Norquist, Steve Schmidt, Craig Shirley, Vin Weber, and David Winston. The usual disclaimer—that the conclusions in this book are my own and that the many people who helped me should not be blamed for them—applies especially to this group.

Other conservative friends and colleagues have enriched my understanding of politics over many years of dialogue and argument. Exchanging views with David Brooks (weekly on NPR’s
All Things Considered
and occasionally on PBS’s
The News Hour
) is an enormous personal and professional joy. I will not implicate all of my conservative and libertarian interlocutors, but I should
mention and thank Spencer Abraham, Saul Anuzis, Michael Barone, David Boaz, Glen Bolger, Karlyn Bowman, Arthur Brooks, John Buckley, Stuart Butler, Christopher Caldwell, Alex Castellanos, Matt Continetti, Michael Cromartie, Linda DiVall, Ross Douthat, Terry Eastland, John Engler, Tony Fabrizio, Frank Fahrenkopf, John Feehery, Andrew Ferguson, Newt Gingrich, Hugh Hewitt, Peter King, Brink Lindsey, Kevin Madden, Eddie Mahe, Mary Matalin, Bill McInturff, Ed Morrissey, Kate O’Beirne, Henry Olsen, Ramesh Ponnuru, Reihan Salam, Michael Strain, John Sununu (father and son), Lance Tarrance, and George F. Will. For their insights over a long period, many others should be named here, too, but at least some of them might be just as happy to be left off my list.

The late Robert Novak hid his kindness beneath his proudly gruff exterior, and the late William F. Buckley Jr. was very generous to me over the years, even though I cannot claim to have known him well.

Given my views, it’s not surprising that I treasure the conversations I have had with moderate and liberal Republicans. I should say a special thanks to Jim Leach, William McKenzie, Connie Morella, Jack Quinn, and Chris Shays.

Many on all sides of politics helped me during reporting trips—those undertaken specifically for this book and during my political travels across the country over many years. I want to single out the staffs of the
Courier-Journal
in Kentucky and the
Clarion-Ledger
in Mississippi for their warm collegiality during my 2014 travels by way of underscoring how important state and local reporting remain in our new and challenging media system.

I have been criticized in the past, with justice, for the epic length of my acknowledgments. To save readers from an ungainly burden, I ask all who were thanked in my earlier books to consider themselves thanked again. A variety of political writers, historians, and political scientists whose work was so helpful to me are acknowledged in my bibliographic note. I’m grateful to them all.

In writing about the Democratic side of the 2008 and 2012 campaigns and the legislative and political struggles of the Obama years, I was informed by many people, only some of whom I can list here. They included David Axelrod, Melody Barnes, Joel Benenson, Bob Borosage, Bill Burton, James Carville, Bill Daley, Brendan Daly, Brian Deese, Rosa DeLauro, Shaun Donovan, Mo
Elleithee, Rahm Emanuel, Brian Fallon, Barney Frank, Al Franken, Geoff Garin, Anna Greenberg, Stan Greenberg, Mandy Grunwald, Peter Hart, Matt House, Cam Kerry, Tom Kahn, Celinda Lake, John Lawrence, Jack Lew, Bernadette Meehan, Mark Mellman, Guy Molyneux, Cecilia Munoz, David Obey, Peter Orszag, Jen Palmieri, Sharon Parrott, Dan Pfeiffer, David Price, Wendell Primus, Chuck Schumer, Gene Sperling, Neera Tanden, Chris Van Hollen, Kelly Welsh, Fred Yang, and Jeff Zients.

Bob Greenstein and his colleagues at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities are indispensible guides to policy, budgets, and getting numbers right. They were extraordinarily helpful to me on all the budget fights described in this book.

Thanks to Robby Jones and Dan Cox of PRRI, brilliant and careful students of public opinion and partners on many joint polling projects. Thanks also to my Brookings Institution partner on those studies, Bill Galston, who teaches me new things about politics and philosophy every day. My friends at the Pew Research Center, among them Mike Dimock, Carroll Doherty, Scott Keeter, Claudia Deane, and Alan Cooperman, are always generous in responding to inquiries for data, including my sometimes complicated cross-tabulation requests. Exactly the same is true of the great polling staff at the
Washington Post.
Great thanks to Peyton Craighill and Scott Clement. The late Andy Kohut, who founded Pew, was a dear friend and a model for deeply engaged but utterly unbiased social science research. I miss him still.

This book is built on reporting and reflection over many years of writing about American politics. For the opportunity to see American political life up close, to crisscross our nation over and over, and to meet politicians, activists, and citizens in almost every state, I thank both the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post.
From 1975 through 1989 (with some time out in Europe and the Middle East between 1983 and 1986), I wrote about various levels of politics for the
Times,
and I will always be grateful for the experience. Some of my reporting in those years—on the complicated fight inside the Democratic Party in 1976 that led to Jimmy Carter’s victory, the rise of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush’s triumph in 1988—is important to this account. I found a home at the
Washington Post
in 1990, first as a political reporter and then, after 1993, as a columnist.