{"id":159655,"date":"2022-09-19T21:44:13","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T01:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=159655"},"modified":"2022-09-19T21:44:13","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T01:44:13","slug":"in-the-1990s-the-gop-got-a-hard-push-to-the-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/in-the-1990s-the-gop-got-a-hard-push-to-the-right-159655","title":{"rendered":"In the 1990s, the GOP Got a Hard Push to the Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Bobelian – The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pat
Pat Buchanan speaks at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. \u201cThere is a religious war going on in this country,\u201d he told the delegates. \u201cIt is a cultural war \u2026 for the soul of America.\u201d (Ron Edmonds\/AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the long run, history will validate Donald Trump\u2019s stand on a border wall,\u201d Patrick Buchanan<\/strong><\/a>, the former Nixon and Reagan White House aide and Republican presidential candidate, wrote in 2019. \u201cWhy? Because mass migration from the global South \u2026 is the real existential crisis of the West.\u201d Having proselytized for NAFTA\u2019s repeal, isolationism and the \u201cBuchanan fence\u201d across the Mexican border decades before Trump burst into the political arena, Buchanan urged the president to fend off the \u201cmultiracial, multiethnic, multicultural\u201d changes he had long railed against. The op-ed ended with a catchphrase with odious origins: \u201c\u2018America First!\u2019 is still a winning hand.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though Buchanan was years removed from the limelight, the fact that he parroted Trump\u2019s agenda cast light on the improbable journey of the Republican Party away from Ronald Reagan\u2019s principles to take shape as a far more conservative and partisan political force.<\/p>\n

Identifying the causes of this radical transformation has engrossed political chroniclers for years. Nearly universally, scholars point to Barry Goldwater\u2019s seminal role in the rise of modern conservatism in the 1960s. This was followed a decade later by the ascension of the New Right, which radicalized the party by stoking racial grievances and exploiting contentious social issues. As one of its leaders, Howard Phillips, explained at the time, \u201cWe organize discontent.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

In \u201cPartisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries who Remade American Politics in the 1990s,\u201d Nicole Hemmer<\/strong><\/a>, a scholar at the Obama Presidency Oral History Project at Columbia University and a co-founder of The Washington Post\u2019s daily historical analysis section, Made by History, makes an insightful contribution to this body of work by examining how a new breed of Republicans propelled the party further to the right in the 1990s, steering it away from Reagan even as they continued to pledge allegiance to the former president\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

Casting Buchanan as a beacon of this movement, Hemmer tracks the party\u2019s adoption of his views and imitation of his pugilistic style despite Buchanan\u2019s exile from the GOP after his surprising 1992 presidential run.<\/p>\n

While Buchanan\u2019s stridency displaced the GOP\u2019s country club mores, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich\u2019s brash demeanor and combative approach polarized Washington during the 1990s. Though politics had always been a combat sport, both parties had regularly collaborated, limiting their biggest confrontations to genuine and consequential disputes throughout the Cold War. Hemmer ably recounts the pitched battles between Gingrich and President Bill Clinton, culminating in Clinton\u2019s impeachment, that shattered this status quo and led Republicans to demonize Democrats, which made coexistence with the opposition, let alone cooperation, repugnant. Gingrich\u2019s \u201cstate of perpetual warfare\u201d and \u201cconstant revolution\u201d also purged the GOP of moderates and turned its focus away from governing to a fixation on obstructionism highlighted by multiple government shutdowns, a playbook followed by congressional Republicans since 2009.<\/p>\n

A new generation of right-wing media pundits encouraged these tactics. As Hemmer points out, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Dinesh D\u2019Souza and lesser-known copycats chastised Republicans for striking deals in a constitutional framework designed for compromise. No matter how intractable or mean-spirited they seemed, their capacity to induce outrage and deliver political entertainment skyrocketed their popularity on talk radio and cable television: Limbaugh, the most prominent of the bunch, emerged as the party\u2019s kingmaker.<\/p>\n

Considering Hemmer\u2019s description of the GOP\u2019s evolution, it comes as no surprise that by 2020, there were only remnants of Reagan\u2019s legacy. Republicans maintained conservative positions on religious liberty, gay rights and other social issues, and espoused a strong military and lower taxes while paying lip service to a smaller government and budgetary restraint.<\/p>\n

Unbending positions on other hot-button issues, however, bore little resemblance to Reagan\u2019s. His willingness to raise taxes, support modest gun-control measures and grant amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants would have made him anathema among current Republicans.<\/p>\n

Just as significant, the party\u2019s populist rhetoric and isolationism turned its back on free markets and globalization, concepts it had erstwhile cast in divine terms.<\/p>\n

From a stylistic standpoint, the differences were starker. Reagan, the \u201cGreat Communicator,\u201d beamed with optimism when espousing America\u2019s virtues as a \u201cshining city upon a hill.\u201d Gloomy, resentful and boiling with rage, conservative firebrands, on the other hand, approached politics with apocalyptic fervor. \u201cThere is a religious war going on in this country,\u201d Buchanan declared at the 1992 GOP convention, for instance. \u201cIt is a cultural war \u2026 for the soul of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one personified this dramatic shift in temperament more than Trump. He gleefully belittled his opponents with pejorative nicknames, mocked venerated public officials such as John McCain, and made sexist, racist and xenophobic remarks. When protesters clashed with his supporters, his campaign rallies carried the vibe of professional wrestling events. In one instance, Trump urged the audience to \u201cknock the crap out of them.\u201d Despite the hand-wringing by party leaders like Paul Ryan, Trump\u2019s dominance became evident during the 2016 Republican convention when the delegates \u2014 mimicking the rowdier crowds at his rallies \u2014 chanted \u201clock her up\u201d in repeated calls to imprison Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

While Hemmer and others \u2014 Dana Milbank\u2019s \u201cThe Destructionists\u201d comes to mind \u2014 have comprehensively explored the roots of the GOP\u2019s metamorphosis over the past 60 years, the Democrats\u2019 failure to effectively challenge this brand of conservatism has received less scrutiny. As Democrats moved to the right under Bill Clinton, they allowed Republicans to set the agenda and, with a few exceptions like the Affordable Care Act, spent most of their energy trying to preserve the liberal accomplishments of the Great Society rather than offering compelling alternatives. Their focus on national elections also ceded control of state governments to the GOP, allowing Republicans to enact ever-more extreme legislation on abortion and gun control over the past three decades.<\/p>\n

The more pressing question is why the GOP\u2019s base has been so willing to tolerate if not condone crass behavior, racist overtones, political violence and authoritarian threats to democracy even in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and Trump\u2019s far-fetched stolen-election claims. This collective mind-set has granted him cultlike status: \u201cI could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn\u2019t lose any voters,\u201d he famously boasted in 2016. \u201cIt\u2019s like incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Political observers have offered economic insecurity, racism, xenophobia, globalization, gerrymandering, misinformation, siloed media consumption, social media and authoritarian tendencies as a credible yet frightening list of explanations. For anyone studying the rise of right-wing extremism, the next step is to go beyond making these diagnoses to finding a cure for them.<\/p>\n

Michael Bobelian teaches journalism at Columbia University and is the author of \u201cBattle for the Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court.\u201d<\/em> Read more at The Washington Post…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By Michael Bobelian – The Washington Post In the long run, history will validate Donald Trump\u2019s stand on a border wall,\u201d Patrick Buchanan, the former Nixon and Reagan White House aide and Republican presidential candidate, wrote in 2019. \u201cWhy? Because mass migration from the global South \u2026 is the real … <\/p>\n

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