Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR) Profile picture
Jul 22, 2019 6 tweets 3 min read Read on X
But majority of US- a "liberal consensus"- liked active gov't. The GI Bill gave educations to 7.8 million soldiers, letting them climb to middle class, and from 1945-1960, GNP jumped 250%, from $200 bn to $500 bn, baby boom meant families and consumers. Why go back? /40
In 1951, young Taft believer William F. Buckley Jr. wrote God and Man at Yale, saying that Enlightenment idea of making fact-based arguments must be wrong because voters kept choosing active gov't, which was bad by definition. /41
Stop trying to convince people with facts: "free enterprise" and God are not optional! In 1954, Buckley and BIL write a book saying McCarthy is right, and US is under siege by "Liberals," meaning everyone, D and GOP, who likes active government. "Conservatives" must prevail! /42
Lots of desegregation cases after 1941, and in 1954, SCOTUS decided Brown v. Board outlawing segregated schools. Unanimous decision; Chief Justice Earl Warren was former GOP Gov of CA. But now Taft folks have their ancient wedge: active gov't means tax dollars go to blacks. /43
1955, Buckley starts National Review to tell "the violated businessman's side of the story." When Ike enforces desegregation at Little Rock High school, NR defends segregation and S whites start to pay attention to Movement Conservatism. /44
When Buckley's BIL ghostwrites Goldwater's 1960 Conscience of a Conservative, he calls Brown v. Board unconstitutional. In 1964, moderate GOP Nelson Rockefeller self-destructs, and Goldwater's gets the nod. He picks up AZ... five Deep South States. Strom Thurmond joins GOP. /45

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More from @HC_Richardson

Jun 28
But here's the thing: Trump used to speak in impressions. Not everyone got it, but it really was effective if you could experience it, rather than parse it. But this isn't impression. It just sounds like your sloshed great uncle.
Wait. Climate. Not the police. This is all about him. It's just words slung together. Lie here: he did not fund HBCUs. Cut funding. And no, Black voters are not flocking to Trump. It's all a fantasy.
Oh, goody. We had water and... wait. Best forms of what? Energy? What environmental numbers? Oh, Biden should call that answer out. There was nothing there. It made no sense.
Read 12 tweets
Oct 24, 2020
Writer's Block.

A thread for @alixabeth and others. This is not about writing problems in general: procrastination, frustration, stress eating, pain, and so on. It's for when you cannot remember how to write- like there is a gap in your brain- and the whole world goes gray. 1/
You might well be a prolific writer, but it starts to dry up. It's honestly like you can't remember how to do it. Upset, you tell friends, who joke about it, because OF COURSE you can write. But you can't, and you can't convince anyone you have a big problem. So you wither. /2
The harder you try to meet that deadline, or outline that book, the more elusive it gets. It is like you have lost a piece of yourself, and you are terrified you will never get it back. But no one understands. So you try harder to write, and it gets worse. /3
Read 13 tweets
Oct 25, 2019
Re: Barr's now apparently criminal inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation. FWIW, Trump's GOP has made disinformation surrounding investigations a key part of their political strategy. /1
There was Clinton's emails, of course, which last week's report showed was completely fabricated. There was not a crime. The investigation was, itself, the story that would change votes. It seems that Giuliani was vital to the strategy of keeping investigation leaks coming. /2
Giuliani and Trump turned to pressure Ukraine's leaders for dirt on Biden after the 2018 midterms showed they were in trouble, but William Taylor's statement and texts made it clear they didn't care about the dirt so much as for Zelensky to say he was opening an investigation. /3
Read 5 tweets
Oct 1, 2019
Although it has been a lifetime since this morning when Trump threatened civil war, he was onto something. Not a war now- which Russian trolls have been pushing and right wingers have echoed for over a year- but how the present looks like the years before the real Civil War. /1
In the 1830s, wealthy slaveowners began to defend slavery as good for white men. But when Indian Removal in 1830s pushed native people off rich cotton lands, land prices skyrocketed and forced many whites into poverty (see @rothmanistan's Flush Times and Fever Dreams). /2
As poor folks started to turn against the rich slaveowners who made up less than 1% of the population, elites undercut their opponents by increasingly denigrating enslaved black people and urging racial solidarity. Opponents, they said, wanted to make slaves equal to whites. /3
Read 15 tweets
Jul 19, 2019
Cherry-picked versions of GOP history argue that the party has been unchanging in its support for black rights and ordinary Americans, but that's just not right. The long history of the GOP has been both glorious- as they argue- and sordid.

Let's have a look, shall we? /1
The GOP organized in the 1850s. White northern man had long worried that rich southern slaveholders were taking over the government. In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act opening the West, which had been free under the Missouri Compromise, to slavery. /2
They would create new slave states, overpowering free states. Soon rich men would own Congress. Poor white men would become serfs. The day after the K-N Act passed, N Reps from all parties joined to stand against the Slave Power, and ordinary men protested the new law. /3
Read 40 tweets
Jul 5, 2019
@Cernovich @MaraGay Douglass was indeed a Republican, a member of the party that organized to stand against a cabal of wealthy men who controlled the US government and used it to establish an oligarchy. Their wealth came from enslaved labor, so Republicans sought to stop the spread of slavery. /1
@Cernovich @MaraGay It was a proud party, one that believed the economy grew from the bottom up, and so the government should protect equality of opportunity for all individuals (men, but that was expected in that era). /2
@Cernovich @MaraGay So it established public college, and gave away land to farmers, and invested in railroads, and taxed all American incomes to pay for national development. The early GOP gave us our first activist state... and the economy boomed. /3
Read 5 tweets

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