Running for Governor of CA as a Republican in 1966, as Lisa McGirr shows in SUBURBAN WARRIORS, Ronald Reagan supported the right "to discriminate against Negroes," "refused to repudiate the John Birch Society," used "coded language" and "profited by playing to white racism."
Even before that, in 1963, Joe Alsop wrote that “a Goldwater candidacy will automatically make the Republican Party into the ‘white man’s party.”/2
In his book, The AGONY OF THE GOP, 1964, Robert Novak used the same words as Alsop in describing the dangerous direction of the Republican Party: White Man’s Party.”/3
In 1961, William Loeb, the influential conservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader sought to “persuade the Republican Party to become the white man’s party” so “we can turn this political situation around.”/4
In 1964, Arthur H. Niemeyer, a former GOP precinct chief in Illinois, supported Lyndon Johnson and said the Party “has deserted the principles of Abraham Lincoln” and noted that “the two major parties have changed sides in 100 years.”/5
And, of course, Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party, leading the Bergen Record to ask, shortly before the 1964 election, "what has happened to the party of Abraham Lincoln that makes it so attractive to one of the South's most violent racists?" /6
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One dynamic very easy to foresee is that the GOP Caucus will unanimously (or nearly) oppose every significant Biden legislative initiative, as they did under Obama, no matter its merits. Negotiations are important but the GOP endgame is clear. /1 washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021…
I’m skeptical that the reason why Republicans won’t go along is explainable along these lines. Under Trump, they supported expanding the power of the federal government in many instances, increased the size of the debt, and passed a tax cut that did not help the “U.S economy.”/2
It strikes me that total opposition to Democratic legislative proposals has become a far more deep-rooted principle for the GOP than, say, “traditional Republican concerns about the debt and deficit,” or “worries about the side of the federal government.” /3
This excellent column by @paulkrugman evokes the "Committee on Research in Economic History" founded in 1940 and tasked with showing that New Deal era government-economic development projects were deeply in the American grain, not a dangerous departure./1 nytimes.com/2021/04/01/opi…
As I discuss in FREE ENTERPRISE:AN AMERICAN HISTORY, this group sought to promote scholarship that exposed the myth of laissez faire and showed “public spending to be a long-standing political tradition.” /2
In a special 1943 issue of the JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY called "The Tasks of Economic History," and in a number of influential monographs, leading scholars--including Louis Hartz and Oscar Handlin--published state-focused studies that offered evidence for these claims./3
I've already done a thread critiquing Balz's framing of the GOP's "traditional resistance" to deficits and I wanted to note a separate point about how he frames backlashes in this piece./1 washingtonpost.com/politics/biden…
His claim is that the Great Society “triggered a backlash against bigger government, which gave rise to the conservative movement.” This framing is very common but I feel that it underplays the agency of those who actually participated in the backlash. /2
Very often we see similar framing about the Civil Rights movement, with the claim that it “sparked” a backlash. /3
Although the GOP once supported "free soil," we no longer refer to it as a "traditional Republican" belief. Yet journalists, against all evidence, persist in referring to the GOP's "traditional resistance to bigger deficits and more debt."/1 washingtonpost.com/politics/biden…
Remember way back in 2017 when the Senate GOP unanimously passed the Trump tax cut, most of whose benefits went to the wealthy and corporations, and which has substantially added to the deficit?/2 forbes.com/sites/christia…
Remember back in 2002 when Vice President Dick Cheney told Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil that "deficits don't matter." /3 chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-20…
Interesting that neither the obit in the WaPo or the Times mentions Brock's role as RNC Chair in helping to found the journal, "Common Sense: A Republican Journal of Thought and Opinion." /1 nytimes.com/2021/03/25/us/…
When I interviewed Bill Brock in May 2018, he told me that he thought of his work as RNC Chair as "the most meaningful work I've ever done," emphasizing both outreach and openness to ideas./2
He also told me that the GOP "focus on social issues has made us limited" and that, too often, "we define our opponents as immoral."/3
Terrific article by @jimtankersley and @JasonDeParle on the transformational nature of the Biden relief plan. I continue, however, to question the framing of backlashes as a reflexive response “generated” by, in their example, the 2009 Obama stimulus. 1/
I disagree with this framing at least for 2 reasons. First, The claim that the “law could provoke a backlash” denies agency to those who participate in backlashes and attributes the causal factor to be demands for equal rights or progressive legislation. /2
Second, the history of backlashes shows them to often be pre-emptive rather than reactive. To take one example, the so-called “white backlash” to the Civil Rights Movement got its name In 1963, a year before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. /3