The Real Republicans: The Case for Moderates, Liberal, and Pragmatic Conservatives in Our Party part 5

“These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror. They have no program for America – no program for the Republican party. They have no solution for our problems of chronic unemployment, of education, of agriculture, or racial injustice or strife… On the contrary – they spread distrust. They engender suspicion. They encourage disunity…There is no place in this Republican party for such hawkers of hate, such purveyors of prejudice, such fabricators of fear…These people have nothing in common with Republicanism. The Republican party must repudiate these people.” -Nelson Rockefeller 1964 Republican convention

Missed opportunities abound and mistakes have been made in our recent past. The conservative movement was looking for a new home, as the libertarian/constitutional conservatives had been slowly deprived from their party during Franklin Roosevelt’s tenure in office and his heavy handed use of government. Libertarian conservatives predominantly from the western states as well as states’ rights’ Dixiecrats from the south, who vehemently believed against federal action to desegregate the south, an idea that fit nicely with conservatism and the general message of hands of libertarianism, would continue to feel pushed as the civil rights issues of the 1960’s continued to roil the Democratic party with intense division.

While liberalism was the predominant force in post World War 2 era and both parties having strong center to center left factions in charge, conservatives were left without a home. Throughout these years conservative sought to regain influence, and to do so one of the two major parties would become theirs. While they kept pushing in the Democratic Party, conservatives in the Republican Party began to have more sway as their ranks filled with disaffected former democrats. Subversive planning and execution by planting their own into places of GOP power to be constantly informed of ideas and decisions was just one of a multitude of examples of how the conservative movement was truly willing to do whatever it took to make their goals of a conservative dominated party come true. As the 1964 primary came with libertarian conservative Barry Goldwater beating out liberal Nelson Rockefeller, the evident change the Republican Party was beginning to witness was evident.

In some Goldwater support groups, images of Lincoln and Ike were taken down or covered up and one insider even commented on how it didn’t matter if Goldwater won the presidential election. What mattered were their overall efforts, symbolized by their candidates’ victory over the moderates and the liberals, to convert the Republican Party of Lincoln and of Teddy Roosevelt into their party of anti-government libertarians and segregationist social conservatives. Even if he lost, they knew, they would be well on their way to achieving just that. Liberals and moderates would end up trying to capitalize on Barry Goldwater’s crushing defeat, but their earlier mistakes in countering the conservative swelling of their party as well as their overall belief in party unity versus standing up for their ideals which would roil the party with internal strife would play pivotal roles in their eventual defeat and loss of their own party.

A major chance the moderate and liberal Republicans had in their favor was the primary win of Dwight D. Eisenhower over the conservative nominee and his subsequent victory in the presidential elections. His election put an end to Democratic domination of the presidency for the previous decades which had been in their hands in no small part due to the catastrophic conservative handling of the Great Depression. President Eisenhower considered himself a moderate, not as leftward as leading GOP liberals Nelson Rockefeller and Thomas Dewey, but certainly not a conservative. In fact a statement Ike said put his personal views into a nice perspective in dealing with the conservative faction.

“I have just one purpose, outside the job of keeping this world at peace, and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican party in this country…If the right wing wants a fight, they’re going to get it. If they want to leave the Republican Party and form a third party, that’s their business…If they think they can nominate a right-wing Old Guard Republican for the presidency, they’ve got another thought coming. I’ll go up and down this country, campaigning against them. I’ll fight them right down the line.”- Dwight D. Eisenhower

In fact, many conservatives and libertarians from both the Democratic and Republican parties considered forming a far-right party, but eventually believed that the GOP could serve their interests and their beliefs. Sadly, it was Ike himself who lost the opportunity throughout his presidency to vocally and vigorously stand for the moderate and liberals in his administration and in his party for more reason than one. He had been nearly defeated by the Old Guard conservatives in his first presidential run, and always seemed to overestimate their ability to discredit or politically harm him. Preserving his image of a president and probably more so, the general for all the people regardless of parties or ideologies, was notably also in his mind put this into conflict with his desire for what the future of the party should be. Unfortunately this led to his time period actually resulting in the slowly building overt and covert takeover of the party. His administration when dealing with domestic partisan politics simply became a prime example of a missed political opportunity to keep the party centrist before the new generation of radicalized libertarian conservatives would replace the more tempered Old Guard conservatives.

Some of the same political maneuverings done by these new libertarian conservatives would be later applied by the social/theological conservatives in the 1980’s after the call to arms by evangelical leaders put forward a whole new type of radicalism. A radicalism that even Mr. Conservative himself Barry Goldwater, who had uttered the words of “extremism…is no vice”, would himself denounce as “a bunch of kooks”. This along with the rise of the neo-cons would lead to a continuing falling away from the original and true Republicanism as espoused by Lincoln, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower and would help culminate into the party that would rule the government in the early to mid 2000’s.

While it was these “kooks” who ended up controlling today’s party, it would be the at times subversive, hate filled, hard-line, states’ rights, libertarian-conservative takeover of the Republican party by the Goldwaterites that would lead to the doors of extremism being thrown open for decades to come with the original moderates, liberals and even center-right conservatives being unable to stop the tide.

All three brands of conservatism of the neocons, social cons, and libertarian cons would come together in what would be a continuation of the Fusionism that allied the hands-off government libertarian conservatives in the west, who supposedly where the true libertarians in terms of having generally the “live let live” view of society but believed in using government as little as possible even when dealing with civil rights, with the vitriol of the southern segregationist conservatives, a marriage of convenience that would serve the more traditional and generally center-right minded and tempered Old Guard conservatives by enabling them power to fully take over the party and that would enable the disaffected southern democrats to find a new home for their Dixiecrats. Unfortunately, all this did was bring about an extreme radicalizing of the more traditional Old Guards or, as I said before, in some ways a complete replacement of this more pragmatic and realistic conservatism with a hate and poison filled segregationist version from the Dixiecrats and anti-government hatred from the staunch libertarians.

From then on and until today, Fusion conservatism would dominate the party and let into the mix with some grumblings from the libertarians, the theocrats and warmongering neo-cons who along with the traditional hatred of government would reshape how the party ideology would be like whenever they would take full control of government. The Old Guard libertarian conservatism that was focused solely on government and market conservatism without the near total government rejectionist view of full blown libertarianism would cease to exist or become clumped with the remaining centrists as moderate.

As with Ike in these party affairs, original moderates and liberals would answer back with inaction and missed opportunities early on and while some would try to capitalize on the conservative’s devastating defeat in the 1964 election, it would end up being too little too late. In some cases, their desire to expand the party to garner more votes would put them in favor or at least let those who supported the Southern Strategy have their way. Even when liberals such as Grant Reynolds, an African American liberal republican who complained about the Southern Strategy and pointed out how it would not only trade out the black support but also basic Republican social beliefs for the Dixiecrat support, he was told by other moderates that he should be fighting more against the democrats than worrying about the party’s political strategy.

A general belief among many liberals and moderates was that the party with their conservative wing being mostly the center-right business oriented conservatives, would still be a centrist party with the moderate and liberal Midwestern and Northeastern regions being the core of Republican support. Maybe, it was thought, expanding the big tent to the south would be helpful in making the party a majority party as it had been several times in the past, but had not been for some time. This lack of foresight, misreading, and miscalculation into what was slowly going on around them would start to lead to their demise or near demise over the many years to come.

The liberal Republican started to fade away fast after 1970’s as the party became much more visibly conservative and have practically ceased to exist in today’s world for quite some years. Some merely quit from politics or others switched to the only party that at least had a semblance to their belief in an active government, even if it was not their original Republican take on liberalism. Liberal republicanism, despite its roots and command in the Republican from the party’s conception, would end up becoming a forgotten viable political faction with most modern people seeing it as merely an oxymoron. Like the way the label moderate is used by the right, the term liberal republican is used by many extreme conservatives to label anyone who might have a liberal lean towards any issue, and especially if they just don’t like their less not so extreme take of politics. Such for example, those who are socially liberal yet in every way an economic or government conservative may be called a “liberal republican” by those who seek to defeat them for a more hard-line and acceptable opponent. For it to have come to this for this wing of the party is to show how well the conservatives had succeeded in their takeover and distortion of the true and honest goals of original Republicanism.

The moderates would continue to hold out for many years, voting for Reagan in no small part due to his putting on the ballot for vice president an Old Guard conservative in the form of H.W Bush, or who by that time and especially in today’s world would have been and was regarded as a moderate. This helped assuage some concern in general voters’ minds that was present of Reagan being from the conservative wing maybe being too far-right for their moderate views. Reagan himself was able to sweep the 1980 republican primary with great help from the South that by then was quickly becoming the anchor of the Republican Party. As did many political party leaders before him, he continued to pursue the southern strategy and helped bring in more of the evangelical southern vote to the GOP ballot box.

H.W Bush would, because of his more tempered, reasonable and pragmatic conservatism of old, pay the price of this decade’s long influx of the many conservative brands into the party with the serious challenge by the social conservative of Pat Buchanan in the primaries and the general belief that he was not truly conservative.

Even those such as H.W Bush, who would have at an earlier time been considered obviously conservative, were no longer conservative due to their reluctance to adhere to this new breed of extremism. Today if one is along the lines of the original Old Guard conservatism of the early 20^th century which believed in small government but also one of sound economic goals such as lowering taxes along with the necessary adjustment in spending, something lost with Goldwater and Reagan, and social progress through government such as women’s rights, they would undoubtedly be considered moderate. Although in comparison to how far-right the conservative brand has moved to, it’s not hard to see them as “moderate”.

Since the Reagan years, all primaries for the nomination for the party presidential bid have been where candidates show just how far-right they can be, whoever does not and does not share at least one of the three conservative views on policy will have a hard time securing the nomination. In doing so, it has been effectively set so that any moderate candidate has very little chance of winning a presidential primary. At least, with the current makeup of the base the party itself rests upon.

Moderates, although a force even throughout the generally conservative Reagan years, would soon be set on the same path of virtual extinction as the liberal republican. While groups have formed to try and make a more inclusive party, most of them still work within the box instead of outside of it by accepting the base being built on the far-right while any outreach leftward must emanate from the extreme; a far-right to center strategy. Of course there will not be any real attempt to moderate the party as long as the extremists are in charge and what outreach towards the center they would make would be merely to try and expand their power base of electability keeping those who would be maybe more moderate in comparison (but historically speaking still very much conservative) to themselves on a tight leash.

Centrists have therefore been nearly completely routed in the GOP throughout the mid 20^th century on. Our proud Republican traditions have been forgotten, or the labels have become construed by conservatives and misunderstood by the public and even by some centrists themselves. Centrist republicanism has become labeled as a spineless idea that only seeks to find compromise instead of standing for principles. A good argument, except that our history has shown that principles that this party once stood for were best carried out by the moderate and liberal factions of the Republican Party.

So, I was mistaken. Part Four of this series was NOT the last chapter in Martin Rybicki’s essays and it’s probably not the penultimate essay, either. So, here is Part Five of “The Real Republicans.” You can read parts one through four at the Progressive Republican.

Our stands and principles are not the same as the hard-line conservatives, and this is something that must be realized and accepted by the centrists, many of whom are trying to come up with ways to moderate but still not abandon staunch conservative principles. The desire by the far-right is obvious in keeping conservatism the party platform and either being ignorant or purposely ignoring the fact of this party having a strong non-conservative tradition of progress. Unfortunately, many moderates work of this assumption of the GOP being the conservative party without thinking outside the box and looking at the party through another light. One that is backed, extensively as my previous posts have shown, by history itself.

But this is still a relatively new century and a new era in politics and sometimes former winners can become losers, and the new will replace the old. Our philosophy and reasoning to stay Republican and why there definitely is room for another party that believes in active government, albeit with working alternatives to the Democrats, must be put forth. A collective thinking of those of us that are left and those that are interested in the retaking of our party must now be done if we are to capitalize on the defeat and banishment to the political wilderness of the fusion conservatives and their hold on the party. As I am doing, and I hope many others are as well, first an in-depth look at who we were and what we stood for and how it came to be. Historical retrospect is important at not only learning to develop a viable 21^st century republican centrism, but also to, as this specific paper has done, see what happened in the last 50 years and how mistakes were made by us and what the opposition did to succeed. History must be poured over in detail if we are to develop an understanding and a plan for the future of our movement. So that we may gain knowledge to maybe, bring back the echo of Lincoln into his and our Republican Party.