Hullabaloo

Monday, August 08, 2011

 
Learning from History
by David Atkins

Progressives seeking answers for how to fight back against the centrism fetish at the highest levels of the Democratic Party and a Republican Party careening rightward with increasing momentum have suggested a variety of answers: forget politics and set up "transition towns"; focus on creating a third party; take the fight "to the streets"; keep up business as usual and prevent a Republican takeover at all costs; etc.

But smart progressives would do very well to learn from the successes of the Right--not just in the recent past, but over the last 50 years. Back in the 1960s, Richard Nixon was the ostensible leader of the Republican Party. But he did not lead as the Conservative Movement wished him to. He opened up China, founded the Environmental Protection Agency and generally embraced Keynesian policies. A Limbaugh-style conservative had nowhere to go: both parties were set against the hardcore Conservative view of the world. Barry Goldwater was the beating heart of the Conservative Movement, and after his crushing defeat, the Movement had a set of choices: leave politics altogether, found a third party, or take over the Republican Party. Their choice was to take over the Republican Party:

REPUBLICAN Party leaders, however, ignored the "Goldwater boomlet." Vice President Richard Nixon, the front-runner for the 1960 Republican nomination, believed that the greatest threat to the party came not from the right but from the left. In July, Nixon met with Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York, and agreed to change the party platform to win moderate-Republican support. Conservatives were outraged, referring to the pact, in Goldwater's words, as the "Munich of the Republican Party."

A few days later, at the Republican National Convention, an angry Goldwater called on conservatives to "grow up" and take control of the party. And that, according to Brennan, is exactly what they set out to do. At a time when "liberal and moderate Republicans, like the rest of the country at that time and like historians ever since, continued to view conservatives in a one-dimensional mode," conservatives believed that Goldwater's popularity, the rise of a conservative press, and the growing strength of conservative youth groups boded well for the future.

Increasingly disillusioned with Republican moderates and with the whole tenor of American political debate, the right began to see organization as the key to political power. In the midst of the 1960 presidential campaign, for example, William Buckley, the conservative fundraiser Marvin Liebman, and almost a hundred student activists met at Buckley's estate in Sharon, Connecticut, and formed Young Americans for Freedom. Within six months the organization could claim more than a hundred campus and precinct-level political-action groups and at least 21,000 dues-paying members. Using newsletters, radio broadcasts, and frequent rallies, YAF had almost overnight become a powerful nationwide movement.

Had Young Americans for Freedom and other grassroots organizations remained isolated from one another, their impact would have been weak. But in 1961 the political activist F. Clifton White organized a movement to nominate a conservative for President. Traveling around the country, White exhorted conservatives to seize control of their local party organizations and elect conservative delegates to the national convention. The movement orchestrated by White gave conservatives control over the Republican Party and helped to persuade Goldwater to run for President.

Smart progressives would be wise to learn from history. But one needn't listen to me. Just listen to Thom Hartmann.



It's not sexy, it's not exciting, and it doesn't tickle progressive heartstrings whose roots lie more in the politics of protest than precinct building. But it may be the only way to effectuate the change that will save this country.
thereisnospoon 8/08/2011 07:30:00 AM |