Conservatism Unravels, Final

This is the final installment of "Conservatism Unravels," and as such it is a bit of a recap, too.

A little “Reaganism” goes a long way and in the early 1980s, we probably needed a “little Reaganism.” There was some pretty intense anger towards the government back then, even among self identifying Democrats. Republicans, especially conservative Republicans (there were still some liberal Republicans, like Senators Chaffee, Cohen and Weickert, back then), had gained much political ground by pointing to New Deal agencies still functioning in the 1970s, cases of fraud in welfare, and the growth of government workers in general. Cutting the size of government had tremendous appeal to many Americans, including, as I said, a fair number of Democrats, and the Reagan policy was not without merit. To say otherwise would be saying that progressive/liberal programs always work, never need adjustments, or never need to be scrapped, EVER, and that’s not my belief. Democratic congressmen/women and senators were not as likely to make the necessary changes in many programs, as these programs had constituencies who voted Democratic. It took the opposing philosophy of Reagan to make changes, just as now, it will take Democrats to make changes in the Republican programs, and hopefully change the way Americans view the recent Republican anti-government, pro-business, pro-wealthy tax cut philosophy. If you recall the recent election campaign, Republicans were often shown saying to “Make the Bush tax cuts permanent.” They were too leery of saying what that really meant; that is, “Make the tax cuts for wealthy Americans permanent.”

Remember, I said “a little Reaganism” was needed. Like your family budget, you can only cut the government’s budget so much before it hurts. If you rein in your own budget, you trim this and you trim that, but if you keep trimming, eventually your quality of life suffers. It all comes down to each person. When any one of us needs government help, we want Uncle Sam and taxpayers to treat us kindly (Just ask the bankers and auto executives of today). All too frequently, when we’re doing alright, we bash government, but we often forget that perhaps our neighbor, or someone else out there needs help, but now that we’re okay, we get selfish, and it was upon this human failing of “selfishness” that conservatives pushed the envelope that brought us to today’s mess.

Political parties have one main function: to gain and to keep power (Okay, I guess that’s two, but I can’t help it, I count like Joe Biden). The parties themselves are really made up of coalitions of voters at any given moment, even though a fair number of Americans identify with one of the two major parties.^^^ Before the Great Depression, which may now have to be renamed, the Republican Party had two large generalized segments: a conservative wing which was pro-business (especially pro-BIG business, dating to the post Civil War era) and fiscally conservative (for those unaware, that means they watched the purse strings). The other wing was progressive (by the 1930s, the term “liberal” began to replace “progressive” in general usage) with the desire to regulate business abuse, to support organized labor, and to use the Federal Government to help spread prosperity throughout the country. As I said, I’m generalizing here,*** but if you are unaware of American political history from times past, black Americans were about 100% REPUBLICANS back then, and many labor unions and labor leaders also voted consistently Republican. As you can see, the two major segments of the Republican Party were pretty much at cross purposes, but after Teddy Roosevelt (a progressive Republican) departed the presidency, the conservative wing grabbed the upper hand, and they have remained in control to this very day, although, as I‘ll be pointing out, with other non traditional Republican conservative elements joining, and then taking control of the Republican Party. (I’ll stick with basically economic and some social issues here, but naturally foreign policy issues can also dominate political agendas at times, too, and maybe I’ll do an article on that aspect of the two parties in the future.) The 1920s saw the pro-business Republicans in control, not only of the Republican Party, but of the country. Led at first by President Warren G. Harding, but brought to their apex by his successor, Calvin Coolidge, there is a scary similarity between those times and the era of George W. Bush. Only a few months after Republican Herbert Hoover took over as president from Coolidge, the economic system gave way in a major collapse that lasted for more than a decade. Hoover had strong ties to the progressive wing of his party, having supported Teddy Roosevelt when he bolted the Republican Party in the election of 1912 and formed the “Bull Moose Party,” but Hoover also had a traditionalist, conservative side, and during the economic collapse that occurred on his watch, that conservative side too often won out. Even when he finally accepted certain progressive policies, he got little or no credit, since he had at first opposed the measures. By not seizing a truly progressive agenda, Hoover wasted the last chance to wrestle the Republican Party from the clutches of conservatives. In fact, after finally moving in a more progressive manner on some policies, Hoover made what many historians and economists see as a fatal mistake; he moved back to a more traditionalist, dogmatic approach to economic downturns, and raised taxes and cut spending in an effort to balance a budget that was growing ever more out of balance due to higher expenditures and falling tax receipts.@@@ This from a man who had advocated government spending and deficit spending to combat economic downturns not long after World War One, well before John Maynard Keynes developed his economic theory.

The Depression brought major changes to the two political parties, as many progressive Republicans crossed the political boundary and voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a fair number eventually even registering as Democrats, or at least declaring themselves independents. Black Americans gave their votes to FDR in his first reelection bid in 1936. This was the FIRST time in American history that the “Party Of Lincoln” lost the black vote, and Republicans have NEVER gotten it back. American labor, somewhat split in the previous election in 1932, became one of the pillars of Roosevelt’s Democratic Coalition after the 1936 election. Still a good number of progressives remained as Republicans, although their feelings favored many of the Democratic plans.+++ With fewer progressives in the party, conservatives pretty much took control by default. Progressives/liberals gradually dwindled in number in the GOP over time until the Vietnam War, which was very divisive for Democrats, but also was divisive, to a lesser extent, to Republicans. With many progressives gone, the Republican Party became increasingly conservative, but these were still essentially fiscal, pro-business conservatives.

In 1964, before Vietnam became a major issue, Barry Goldwater, a conservative (and kind of libertarian on social policy) senator from Arizona claimed the GOP nomination for president. Goldwater’s philosophy, which at least he didn’t hide (he was brazenly outspoken), had strong appeals to Americans’ patriotism (this was the era of “The Cold War”) and to their increasing desire for law and order. Goldwater didn’t shy away from something that had bugged many conservatives for decades, Social Security. He favored voluntary participation in this program, instead of participation by law. Conservatives loved it, but most of the country was terrified of Goldwater’s brashness in both foreign and domestic policy. Lyndon Johnson won an enormous victory, bolstered not only by the country’s fear of Goldwater, but by the country’s sympathy for Johnson who had taken over for the assassinated John F. Kennedy just a year earlier. Goldwater, however, broke through Democratic domination of the “Old South,“ in a portent of what was to come later with Ronald Reagan. My maternal grandmother, a Republican, voted for Johnson, fearing that if Goldwater won the election, that he would take her Social Security away.%%% If I remember right, she also admitted at that time to voting for FDR in 1936, something she NEVER told my grandfather while he was alive. He was a Republican committeeman in our ward. My grandfather was a Republican by tradition, rather than by self interest, as he worked hard most of his life in a tile factory as a working class American, getting nothing from the Republicans until just a few years prior to his retirement, when one of his best friends, and staunch Democrat, told him to apply for a state job, as the Republicans had won the governorship (1956) and had control over many patronage jobs (saying “patronage jobs” is NOT meant as a slam to Republicans, as Democrats did the same thing). He got the job for those four years, and then the Democrats won, and he was out, but he was old enough to retire anyway. My father, a VERY staunch Republican, also said to me about his father-in-law many years ago, “The Republicans just used your grandfather.“ My grandfather retired to a small pension from his non state job and to of course.....Social Security!

The mid to late 1960s brought lots of turmoil to the country, as anti-war protests and civil rights demonstrations often turned violent. Riots occurred in many major American cities like Los Angeles and Cleveland. With Americans viewing such acts on their televisions on a regular basis, there came a call for law and order, often led by Republican politicians. (Americans finally got “Law & Order” when NBC brought the show to television about 25 years later... Ah... just thought I’d add a little.... humor.) Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress and the presidency, with Lyndon Johnson, until 1968, when Republican Richard Nixon won the presidency. With some splits by liberal Republicans with Nixon, mainly over war policies, conservatives sought to oust liberal Republican officeholders from both houses of Congress. In one case that I remember distinctly, longtime and respected liberal Republican, Senator Jacob Javits of New York, was defeated by conservative James Buckley, brother of conservative guru William F. Buckley. Also somewhere in the earlier 1970s, Leon Panetta, then a congressman and now the head of the CIA, switched from the Republican Party and became a Democrat. Nixon, ever the astute political strategist, saw a chance to gain potential Republican voters in the South, as this Democratic stronghold was becoming disaffected with many Democratic policies, ranging from the Vietnam War, foreign policy in general, a number of social issues, and certainly racial issues, including one of the red hot issues of those times, the busing of school children to try to gain some kind of racial balance in schools. Americans, both black and white, were frequently unhappy that their child or children were forced to leave neighborhood schools and sent by bus to another school, at times clear across town. The issue was devastating and it favored the Republicans, most of whom openly opposed it, while many, but not all, Democrats favored the plan or tried awfully hard to avoid taking a stand either way. In 1972, Nixon swept the South. The once “Solid South” of the Democratic Party was gone. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” to coin a phrase, Nixon wasn’t all bad, and he certainly was not a conservative ideologue. He was a politician, however, and a good one. He developed or went along with certain programs to help low income people and he started a dialogue with both the Soviet Union and China, then known to many Americans as “Red China,” to try to lessen world tensions.

The “Watergate Scandal” and Nixon’s subsequent resignation (his vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned about a year earlier, after criminal evidence was uncovered from his time as Governor of Maryland) gave Democrats a big victory in the congressional elections of 1974, but in many ways, the election results were deceiving, in my opinion, as many Americans voted AGAINST the Republican scandals, rather than FOR Democratic policies. Further, many Republican voters, discouraged and feeling betrayed by the scandals, stayed home on election day. Congressional Democrats misinterpreted the election results, in my opinion, and went on a legislative tear, causing Republican President, Gerald Ford, to wear out his veto pen. I’ve got to tell you that I had an admiration for Ford, who lost his bid for election in his own right in 1976 to southern Democrat Jimmy Cater. Carter won the popular vote by about two million, as I recall, but the “Electoral College” was very close, and Carter’s narrow win in Ohio by only a few thousand votes gave him the presidency.

The troubling term of Jimmy Carter as president helped Republicans overcome any lingering bad feelings about the Nixon years. More and more, Democrats also became associated with government spending, at pretty much all levels of government, and the passage by voters in California of an anti-tax measure should have given them a smack upside the head, but they seemingly failed to “get it.” Republicans “got it!” They saw that Americans were increasingly upset by government spending and the taxation used to support it. Further, the so called “permissive society” of the 1960s carried over to the 1970s, and there most certainly was a reaction to the overt display of sexual matters in American society, as well as abortion, which has proven to be a very divisive issue for the country. These kinds of social issues brought Republicans many new voters, especially among an emerging political force...the Religious Right.

Religious leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell became nationally known because of their advocacy of strict interpretation of biblical verses. Their strong anti-abortion stance proved a powerful tool to recruit voters to the conservative cause, which was the Republican cause. The Roman Catholic Church denounced abortion, and many a former Democrat from this Christian sect voted Republican over this one issue alone. Up until a couple of decades ago, if you had interest in politics, and you heard family names of certain ethnic derivation like Polish, Slovak, Croatian, Irish, or Italian, you knew there was a good chance that these were likely reliable Democratic voters. By the time of Reagan, this most certainly had changed to the point that while many “old time ethnic voters” remained as Democrats, they may have voted Republican for president, and their children may have even been registered as Republicans. Again, I want to emphasize that I’m generalizing, but the change most certainly took place, and some of this can probably even be traced back to the tumultuous 1960s, but the process was slow back then, and the Nixon scandals of the 1970s made many Democrats who had crossed over to vote for him leery of voting for Republicans again.

By 1980, many in the country were angry at government and government’s supporters, who were seen mainly as Democrats. Reagan urged Americans not to see government as a solution to our problems, but to see “government IS the problem.” All of the complaints Americans had about government, large complaints or small complaints, found refuge in Reaganism. Republicans were on the rise as a new political coalition formed. Democrats, fairly or unfairly, were seen as having caused America to lose Vietnam to Communism, to go too softly on the Soviet Union, to unleash racial discontent, to cater to immigrants (mainly Castro’s deported Cubans), to support abortion, to support “gay rights,” to support “women’s rights,” to be against adequate defense spending, to be anti military, to be pro minorities, to be pro “big” labor, to be pro business regulation, to be too willing to help out any group with government aid, to be too open about sex, and to be just plain too much for “big” government. Believe me, I’m sure I’ve left out quite a few more, so if your complaint isn’t there, I apologize. There’s no question that Democrats, just like the Republicans of today‘s mess, stood guilty of many of the charges, some by a larger degree than others. Carter lost, Reagan won, and this new form of conservatism, a strident, anti-government form of conservatism began to take hold, even though Reagan himself was not particularly strident towards his opponents.

The Religious Right loved him, but Reagan was not particularly religious in public, nor did he ever really take up, or expend political capital, to see the major issues of the Religious Right succeed. He gave verbal support, but that was about it. He often publicly declared his opposition to abortion, and the Religious Right cheered, but he never pushed to have pro abortion laws overturned. Likewise, he touted balanced budgets, but ran up record deficits (records for that time). His economic policy was certainly the forerunner of George W. Bush’s, as he cut taxes, with big benefits going to the wealthy, but he started a simultaneous huge build up in military spending. At least back then we MADE THINGS in America, and they weren’t imaginary or just listed on an accountants ledger as “paper gains;” they were real products. But there’s no question that his policies conflicted and they weren’t called “Voodoo economics” without reason. Reagan wanted to cut government, but as I noted way back at the start of this, you can only cut so far, and even in those early years of conservative resurgence, his administration found out that cutting some things can cause problems, and in order to make things come out they way they wanted, his administration declared ketchup a vegetable for the purpose of school lunches, much to the laughter of many Americans. I won’t go on about Reagan, as I covered his years in office, as well as Bush, Sr., and Clinton in other articles in this "Conservatism Unravels" series.

What we see as the legacy of this whole conservative era are various government agencies that were gutted and then blamed for not doing their job. I doubt that it was a conspiracy, but it certainly had the same effect, since budgets were cut by conservatives who didn’t much believe in government being efficient anyway, and that by cutting those budgets, they proved their point; government doesn’t always work efficiently, especially when understaffed. This doesn’t surprise me, as these pro business people have that mentality. To me, we’ve been heading in this direction for years in the PRIVATE SECTOR, too. You go into a store, they don’t have enough clerks or customer service people. Or, they have clerks stocking shelves or cleaning up so that they don’t have to pay other workers for these jobs. Even if you’re a staunch conservative, you’ve got to admit to some of this. Of course, this is all done in the name of being able to pay more money to investors, also known by me as, “The Sit On Their Ass Class.“ Remember folks, 75-80% of all stocks are owned by the wealthiest Americans. This cut, cut, cut to the bone stuff is just part of their make up. In my opinion, too, these business people and investors saw where workers in some countries made $2.00 a day, and they couldn’t wait to get businesses opened in those countries, get “free trade” policies passed in America, and then start reaping the benefits. All the while they began cutting American jobs, or cutting wages and benefits claiming how overpaid American workers are, then further touting how America will become just a service economy. This mentality was just a recipe for eventual disaster. Even business people who didn’t like what was going on had little choice, but to go along. The Bush policies were at war with themselves. With no one to stop the insanity, they ballooned to dangerous levels.

First, tax cuts for the wealthy, but then two military actions, aka, wars. No call by Bush to pay for the wars, only that oft used Reaganism, “We’ll cut spending, and then grow ourselves out of deficits. Lower tax rates mean more tax revenues.” Of course, they didn’t believe in regulation of business to start with, so what better place to start cutting than with business regulatory agencies. This then triggered all sorts of shenanigans by business people, including these various mortgage and other loan packages that now threaten our entire financial system. You had people making loans, who never had to worry about the loans getting paid back, since they sold of the loans to someone else. The other day, I saw a story on CNN about a guy who made about $8,000 a year. The originator of the mortgage loan falsely upped the guy’s income to like $15,000 a year. Now, assuming he had no other debts, he could probably qualify for a loan on a used car, but not an expensive one. What do you think they gave him? Get this! A mortgage loan for over $300,000!!! He never made one payment on the loan, which was almost immediately sold to someone else. He is now faced with foreclosure. Now, was the guy wrong to sign on the dotted line? Yes!!! But the real culprits are those who made this loan to start with, and then whoever bought the damned thing, which was then probably diced up and put into some “bundles” of mortgages and sold off to some investors. The system was circumvented! The firewall is this, if you went to your boss or your brother or your mother-in-law for a $10,000 loan, it is up to them to make a proper judgment about whether you can pay the loan back. If they check your income or your history and find bad things, they have to say, “NO!”

Then the greedy pushed free trade, leaving American workers to the mercy of the “free markets” and unfair agreements with countries where labor protections are no where near on the level as in America or Europe. And Bush cut worker retraining programs, too. What they've done to us is just incredible!!!

Of course, the business people, including the mortgage business, couldn’t wait to sign people up for loans, which they did, some times unscrupulously, and then later when some of these folks lost their jobs, or took pay cuts due to foreign competition, guess what, they couldn’t pay the damned loans.

Their sheer, obsessive greed blocked any common sense into what was going on, and into what was eventually going to happen if things weren’t halted. If you go to your boss and say, “I’d like to borrow $10,000 against my pay for “X” number of years,” and he/she grants you the loan under some payment agreement, but then at some point, they cut your pay, or ship your job off, guess who can’t pay the loan back? This has been what’s going on, one policy conflicting with another. Its insanity!!!

^^^ There are certainly several other political parties involved in American politics. Some have long traditions, while others have had a temporary or short life span, when the two major parties can’t (or won’t) face the issues troubling the country, but only somewhat rarely in modern times have so called “third parties” had impacts. I know that’s a broad statement, but I can only type so much....Hey, my keyboard’s overheating!!!

*** I can only generalize, because, while there certainly are discernible trends in why Americans support one party or the other at times, the fact is, we frequently vote the way we do for any number of reasons; at times voting for a Republican for president, but voting for Democrats for Congress in the same election. There are some logical reasons for this, but this all remains outside this article today.

@@@ It doesn’t in the least surprise me that many of today’s pro-business, pro-wealthy Republicans disavow Hoover. He actually TRIED to do something about the developing economic downturn of those times. They HATE government intervention. They like that he wanted to finally cut government spending, because this bunch HATES the government, but they also HATE the fact that he raised taxes, primarily on the RICH!!! (You weren’t always wrong, Herbert!) So much of the modern Republican economic philosophy is based upon the notion that Republicans never met a tax cut for the rich that they didn’t like. Its interesting that in the recent debate about stimulating the American economy and Obama’s efforts to get some Republican support in the Senate, that the Obama tax cut, which favors middle income people (not enough, however, in my opinion), was negotiated DOWNWARDS, not upwards, in an effort to get Republican support. Hmmm, do you think if the president had offered a big tax cut to the rich that he’d have gotten more than three Republican votes in the Senate? Would Republican “deficit hawks,” absent for the most part during eight years of George W. Bush’s budget deficits and budget shenanigans (like not counting the Iraq War spending in the budget), have shouted “YIPPEE!!! The hell with the deficit if the wealthy get big tax cuts!” Think about it folks. There’s something wrong here.

+++ After a while, many of these progressive/liberal Republicans basically accepted the New Deal programs, but argued that they could manage the programs better and make them more efficient. Neither Alf Landon, FDR’s 1936 opponent, nor Wendell Willkie, his 1940 opponent, nor Thomas Dewey, his 1944 opponent was some kind of rightwing ideologue. I’ll have to do a separate article about the Democratic Party and its basic philosophies and composition, but for today, just the Republicans.

%%% As brash as Goldwater was in his Social Security policy, Democrats were just as brash in exploiting the fear in many American voters, but I really believe, Democratic exploitation or not, this was one instance where “self interest” by non wealthy Americans triumphed. George W. Bush got a cold shoulder after his reelection in 2004, when he too tried to push for partial privatization of Social Security. His plan went nowhere, which is where Social Security would now be if he and Republicans had gotten their way, as the stock market collapse would have left the program gasping for air. Bush can be thankful that he didn‘t get his way, or he and Republicans would now CORRECTLY be blamed for the destruction of many Americans’ Social Security by his “free market“ philosophy.