What Next for the Conservative Movement?
Ferguson, Tim W.
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 20, NO. 1 / JANUARY 1987 Tim W. Ferguson WHAT NEXT FOR THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT? If the numbers aren't there, you'd better plot a new strategy. kay, the election...
...By 1990, the task still looks daunting...
...Asians might take a lead in reforming some metropolitan school systems, if given enough of a political nudge...
...Someday—probably not until we've got the same political wherewithal to tackle the middle-class transfers—it will be time to go after the tax subsidy to debt...
...This is the most depressing Republican problem of all...
...But in the House, we find an unusually small loss for the President's party in an off-year...
...Less has been said about the internal purse strings...
...The optimists see a tide of productive immigrants washing over the cities' problems...
...Though the raw vote totals for the Senate weren't so discouraging (a few pundits noticed that the Republicans got a higher overall percentage in 1986 than in 1980, or 1982) the reality of the results could be worse than it first seemed...
...The Republicans would be able to dislodge many of those House Democrats and possibly gain parity in the Congress—though nothing approaching a "revolutionary" majority—if it weren't for gerrymandering...
...Don't be overly afraid of the unions...
...As federal fiscal discipline diminishes, the spending burden moves inexorably up...
...Republicans suffered in the Senate outcomes irrespective for the most part of whether they ran as Reaganites or not...
...But the latest mixed-up mid-term was no ratification, either...
...Wariness is called for because it's not clear that these much-talked-about guys have any more electoral divisions than the neoconservatives, which is to say fewer than one...
...You're a hawk, nettled by Senator Sasser's objections to building military bases in Central America to fight the Sandinistas...
...S till, among the educated there is hope...
...Even most of the creative economists who challenge orthodoxy and say the debt binge isn't so abnormal or bad will not defend the misallocation of resources that brings it about...
...Employ populism in the way that Treasury official Richard Darman framed it in a recent speech to the Japan Society: as a club against the fat and happy in Big Government or Big Labor or Big Business...
...this affects both shopkeepers and blue-collar workers who might have flirted with political realignment...
...What does minority status mean...
...But therehas been less evidence of this effect than there has been growth itself in the eighties...
...But the eventual, if uncomfortable, resolution may be that Despite a concentrated push by the GOP machinery, Republicans in 1986 actually lost ground in the state legislatures...
...This group realizes that societies without economic growth aren't usually kind to their surroundings...
...If you ask them to stand up and support restraint now for the sake of protecting and preserving the solvency of our country, they will respond...
...Everybody's got to start working harder in the U.S...
...We've heard the talk about setting the agenda and controlling the clock...
...Coincidentally, the public schools have become a subtle culture for—what shall we call it, an NEA agenda?—even as they were scrubbed of religion...
...Yet within their movement is an emergent wing willing to be rational, if still often elitist...
...kay, the election wasn't the "rebuke" of Ronald Reagan that the predictable pack jumped to calling it...
...Food for thought: "professional and managerial" voters went slightly for the Democrats in the '86 congressional races, according to exit polls...
...Moonbeam legacy...
...Speaking of debt, it is surprising that Paul Volcker figured so little in the election just passed...
...in the eighties...
...From their number has come the core of the ascendant intelligentsia, yet the larger Jewish electorate unswervingly supports liberal Democrats...
...Yes, but primarily for incumbents, who are harder and harder to beat (for many reasons, including the demise of straight-ticket voting...
...And, yes, there is The Media...
...How will they do it...
...Intellectual publications challenging the status quo spring up all over...
...Between Bill Bennett and the governors, the biggest teacher union is on the run...
...Reagan Revolution" is not yet one as far as political attitudes—and certainly practices—in the country are concerned...
...Despite a concerted push in this area by the GOP machinery, Republicans in 1986 actually lost ground in the legislatures...
...Soon a lot more people across the political spectrum will be saying it...
...The GOP is excited about its new governorships...
...C o, the Senate isn't a happy prospect...
...Count on seeing Senator Metzenbaum's friendly face...
...more confidently, it can be said that conservative students aren't as intimidated from expressing their views today as they were in the sixties and seventies...
...Note, in this judicial vein, that California just expelled its last vestiges of the Gov...
...Good news...
...These may not be whathe has in mind, but I suggest the following: •Practice realpolitik with the environmentalists...
...By controlling the committees...
...You don't have to be a LaRouchie to point out that, regardless of whether the Federal Reserve's monetary policies have been, are, or will be in accordance with Americans' best interests, Money Center Banks With Billions in Bad Loans Shouldn't Be Living Better Than You and Me...
...Ditto their friends on the Judiciary Committee, maybe...
...Join with the New Right where the issue is generalized corruption, but beware the specifics...
...The lasting damage to the GOP began shortly after that: quiet destruction during the Eisenhower years, ravaging in the LBJ landslide, and ultimately devastation post-Watergate...
...Based on 1982 returns, more Republicans are vulnerable than Democrats next time, as well...
...Meanwhile, here too, push to federalize...
...And those people;--once hired, aren't just going to collect paychecks...
...Even if you give a retiring John Stennis's seat to Trent Lott—no sure thing—it would take a GOP tidal wave to regain Senate control in 1988...
...The difference in the Republican camp is between those who see this habit as mere waste and those who see in it the making of ruin...
...Don't let up...
...Although in the end, a wrenching experience might be what it takes to bring to boil simmering ideological change, as was the case with the New Deal, one hopes there are other ways...
...Of the Democrats up, only Lautenberg of New Jersey, Melcher of Montana, and Bingaman of New Mexico got less than 57 percent of the vote in 1982...
...How about a different approach...
...Encourage and expand upon efforts already under way in California to bring Asians (now 7 percent of that state's population) into a party attuned to their basic attitudes...
...Donald Regan says he is looking for some coalitions for the next two years...
...On the more vexing selective taxes on business, the respective lobbies will have to be depended on to fight better than they did on Superfund...
...Why did the Silent Majority go soft around the edges...
...At the same time, the affluence enjoyed by those who've fared well in the transitionary economy has created for them "quality-of-life" issues that Democrats exploit: opposition to growth and to perceived health and safety threats, for example...
...Interestingly enough, the New Deal coalition that brought lasting change 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 to Congress was not at the root of Democratic strength in the legislatures...
...Some of their tormentors in investment banking may be next, who knows...
...Fred Eckert of upstate New York wrote courageously in the Wall Street Journal one month before the election: "Mr...
...Much as some on the right would deny it, Vietnam remains indelibly etched on the minds of Americans over age 35, in a way that militates against the use of military force at appreciable cost...
...Consider the period 1930-1938, arguably a comparable one in what we'd consider "FDR's revolution": the Democrats, despite the pasting they took in the "court-packing" mid-term election, were up 46 seats, solidifying a hold they've not really relinquished since...
...A poi who practiced their sort of tough-choice politics, Mark White, just got thumped for it in Texas...
...These suggested partnerships, together, could make for a tentativegoverning majority in much of domestic policy before too long...
...It claims the chief executive (but sometimes few other administrative posts) in nearly half the states...
...the optimists do not live in walk-ups or ride the subways...
...On discipline, competency tests, and some degree of parental choice, the opposition is isolated...
...The politics of demography have something to do with it...
...In the growth belt, Arizona and Utah clearly have turned, but that's about it...
...Their record was mixed in this election and their numbers (except in the public sector, which seems immune to layoffs) are declining, though their wealth in health and pension funds remains enormous...
...Still, the neolibs can be helpful in muting the media outcry if we are to do something about the middle-class transfer economy, and they can help in formulating underclass policies as well...
...That's all before you get to the branches of Judiciary and Foreign Relations...
...The Democrats wouldn't come out and fight this time, it was said, but they sure did win...
...Only one sitting Democrat lost in 1986...
...Was there a gentleman's agreement among all the mudslingers out on the hustings that the big banks would get a ride...
...Part of it is the business that no longer exists in a harshly competitive world...
...Not within memory has the intellectual climate for contesting redistributionists been as strong...
...Approach, with caution, some alliances with neoliberals...
...And the numbers over time are disheartening...
...exporting firms with a particular stake in Latin America are waiting allies in an effort to write down the debt and restart trade...
...And it argues for using what sentiment shifts have occurred as leverage in forming alliances with nonconservatives to achieve short-run policy gains while a longer-term effort to reeducate the electorate continues...
...Eckert lost his House seat...
...The opportunity to correct this inequity will follow the 1990 Census...
...For nearly a generation, the entertainment side has been archly liberal-left, the news organs more moderately so...
...Why do their quarterly profits remain so healthy...
...Energy regulation...
...But the New Right stumbles at the legislative stage, because Americans in the end like to think they can decide such matters for themselves...
...Nowhere is this more true than among Jews...
...Because it is hardly reassuring to think of Fritz Hollings reregulating commerce or William Proxmire doing the same to financial services...
...Perhaps this explains the "yellow-ribbon" foreign policy evident on the streets...
...It supports the view that the...
...A closer parallel is the Republican performance between 1918 and 1926, when there was zero net change in the House makeup...
...And the damage won't be limited to two years...
...Certainly, the GOP should take the lead in fighting anti-Asian violence and prejudice...
...The influences have been spiritual and secular...
...The GOP's failure here is fundamental to its perpetual role as underdog...
...This will not sit well with homosexuals, for whom the Georgia sodomy decision is a rallying point...
...It isn't unfair to say that the right is capturing this precinct of the New Class...
...President, put your faith in the people...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 15 "gays" relocate in even greater numbers to tolerant areas, whose GOP in turn co-exists nationally with an intolerant Bible Belt wing the way liberal Democrats did with the old Southerners...
...The issue that will be a crucible for any lasting redirection of government is not addressed, however...
...The revolution hasn't happened because Americans—farmers, pensioners, health-care recipients, students, supporters of aid to Israel and Egypt, you name it—weren't and aren't ready for it, no matter how much they fret about deficits to pollsters...
...Moreover, their memberships are the farm clubs for solid congressional candidates to win those new seats...
...In part because debtors are paying interest instead of buying goods...
...The embattled Civil Rights Commission was starting to do just that...
...If it seeks safety in the Democratic majority in Congress, blast away...
...but this will likely have to wait until after the Reagan presidency (the Nixon-China factor...
...Republicans on the right could learn to differentiate among the greenies, and cut some deals with the better half...
...Buy off the liberals with as generalized a retraining program as you can get, but try to resist the easier unemployment-benefits, as the resistance to taking pay cuts can be a bigger barrier to a new job than lack of training (see Britain...
...But unless the political slippage is checked, unless the opponents of statism get off the onestep-forward-two-steps-back march, the ground may be scorched as we wait a full generation for the seeds now planted to flower...
...Applications for staff positions (the majority gets a lot more) have been flooding the Senate personnel office from the Democratic diaspora...
...On the biggest issue of Reagan's putative revolution, taxes, hold the line in most if not all areas...
...If it can hold its own or improve on this in four years, the House makeup could be altered—except that the state legislatures have a lot to say about who gets redistricted how...
...We're finding out they're vulnerable and worthy political targets...
...Tax revision was a start, but it didn't go far enough...
...The GOP holds up to a third of the seats in Southern legislatures where it formerly had next to none, but that number is barely increasing now and not enough to tip the scales...
...Plus, consider the subcommittees, which, while less important than their equivalents in the House, canmake life uneasy for an administrator trying to undo his bureaucracy...
...More female voters are unmarried, constituting a subdivision of the electorate particularly hostile to conservatives...
...Can more be said of the Reagan "realignment...
...The key is to use leveling devices that knock the legislated props from under the high-and-mighty...
...An optimist would say this overlooks the movement of Republican might to the Sunbelt states, but in terms of congressional redistricting this is not so helpful...
...some conservatives have long said the same thing in less religious tones...
...Twice as many Republicans squeaked by...
...foundation money is plentiful...
...Deadening as it may be to hear its mention, the deficit is more than David Stockman's hobgoblin...
...But the vanguard is way ahead of the troops...
...The Harding-Coolidge-Mellon times were many things, but they weren't a political epoch...
...The Pledge" was a clever idea and its roundup will serve as the basis for resisting any tax increases on individuals...
...Some see in the Reagan rallies and the popularity of a few films some sure signs that America's young have rebuffed the liberalism of their teachers, just as evangelicals have spurned the National Council of Churches and the bishops...
...W by is the Republican party, having lost its place in mainstream American politics, slow in regaining it...
...In the better colleges, libertarians are joining faculties (but like their contemporaries, rarely getting tenure...
...The Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches have veered left and, whatever their attendance falloff, the political pull has been felt on Nicaragua and the nuclear freeze...
...Just how does the GOP figure on winning back the chamber in 1988...
...It is the spending problem...
...Look for spots to team up with any genuine consumer groups (including purchasing managers) and with think tanks against the protectionist bills...
...And the "good Christian" line that so often seeps out is a loser...
...Without an apple-pie environmental cause attached, the standoff on tax increases can be maintained...
...Education is the critical issue here...
...Some of the departed will not be missed, but few conservatives will enjoy the crop that got in...
...Worse, that is, if you agree that the GOP is, for all the deviations, a reasonable proxy for resistance to the leviathan state...
...He's in line to run that Appropriations subcommittee now...
...Will anything happen...
...Opinion surveys do not altogether support this...
...Pat Robertson is obviously right in a lot of what he's saying about moral failings being at the root of political, social, and economic woes...
...But why worry, if many of them will be run by moderate Democrats...
...A higher percentage of voters are members of minority groups that have traditionally voted Democratic...
...Or HUD, and reporting to Senator Riegle instead of Senator Hecht...
...Even within the middle-aged, white suburbs outside the Deep South, however, the greening of America is still in progress and the drain of Republican support steady if sluggish...
...They've shown they will rarely be beaten on a cutting issue, even one of considerable economic cost, because their support is broad and deep...
...Republicans have tried the paid consultants, and passed the bend on the Laffer Curve for political spending...
...Older voters are living longer and growing ever more attached to Social Security, which in turn is now used to batter Republicans at each election...
...With most of the electorate, turn the heat on the trial lawyers...
...Indeed, it's getting to be a cliche, but the 1920s are an eerie model of the U.S...
...The educationist lobby is likely to walk away with more money where it's available, but make them pay for it...
...Economic growth can be a limit on government's take...
...Traditional Republican statehouses, and these included most of the big ones, bent quite a bit during the 1930s but returned to form by 1946 or 1952...
...The GOP's failure here is fundamental to its perpetual role as underdog...
...Consider trying to reshape foreign aid and answering to Senator Inouye instead of Senator Kasten...
...Genuine welfare and housing reform could get a boost from a new federalism push (remember all those GOP governors...
...Since 1978, when what has been called a revolution really began, Republicans have gained fewer than 20 seats net...
...Tim W. Ferguson is editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal...
...Corporate managements are an easy and appropriate case to start with...
...For the most part, they'll be working 12 hours a day on expanding the government...
...and everybody's got to share in the risks...
...In one large state after another, the party has never recovered...
...That brings us to redistricting...
...The best bet for handling the New Right agenda may, here again, be enhanced federalism...
...And as former Republican operative Richard Bond has pointed out, senior Senate Democrats have been moving left in their voting during the 1980s...
...Some very bad things will get worse in the inner cities in the meantime, however, and a second generation of teen males there could be set against the society at large...
...Congress may be largely to blame, but an overall abdication to bigger government is the primary reason why these six years cannot be called a policy or a political revolution...
...How is this possible in the face of a renewed enthusiasm for entrepreneurial business of the sort once identified with the GOP of Main Street...
...Despite years of false gloom and doom, I fear calamity...
...In time, gains could be had in the fundamental struggle for a liberty-oriented, as opposed to a security-oriented, society...
Vol. 20 • January 1987 • No. 1
