Note: This was written shortly after Phillips published American Theocracy in early 2006. There was no reason to throw it up on a "liberal" blog because whenever someone like Phillips, John Dean and any other "conservatives" say anything critical of the GOP, Democrats swoon all over them and have no interest in reading anything critical of these lapsed "conservatives." Since early 2006, the whining from more and more "conservatives" has gotten much larger as they attempt to distance themselves from GWB with the ridiculous claim that he isn’t a real conservative. As Paul Krugman points out today in "Same Old Party," this is complete hogwash. As I came at this from a different perspective and Krugman has made this a more fashionable critique, decided that now it might be a more worthy contribution. I’ve added one sentence to it to acknowledge the latest SCOTUS decision on school integration. Otherwise, it is unchanged.
Whenever I hear "liberals," lapsed Republicans retreating to "Independent" or lifelong Republicans pine for the days when "real Republicans" existed, I can’t help wondering what planet they have been living on. GWB is a real Republican. He exhibits everything I have ever known about Republicans -- it’s just that he says in public much of which his Republican predecessors only uttered in private.
Those like Phillips brayed when the GOP figured out how to capture the hearts and minds of the south (and their ideological twins in other parts of the country). And it wasn’t based on honesty. Republicans wouldn’t get elected to dog catcher if they were honest about their real agenda. Had Democrats had any effective and strong leaders from mid-1968 forward, we would have said, "Good riddance." If the GOP wants the racist, knuckle draggers in this country, they can have them. We tried to bring them into the Twentieth Century, but only when their bellies were empty enough would they go along. As soon as their bellies flopped over their waistbands, they relapsed and brought their "old time religion" with them.
Phillips worked for, and presumably liked. the politics of Nixon. Nixon was no less nasty a piece of work than GWB. "God Bless America" rolled off his lips as frequently as it does Bush’s. Warrantless spying on Americans, election dirty tricks and soliciting corporate bribes were part of the Nixon era. He screwed up southeast Asia as much if not more than LBJ had (and never, ever, forget that the original policies and agreements that began our entry into S. Vietnam were crafted by John Foster Dulles under Eisenhower). Nixon and later Reagan were both active in destabilizing and undermining democratic governments in Latin and South America. Nixon made effective political use of the communist boogieman just as Bush uses the terrorist one. The fact that Nixon didn’t tackle corporate regulatory legislation had nothing to do with his brand of Republicanism -- he didn’t have the political capital, language and Congress to sell those bad ideas, and a majority of Americans had living memories of having personally benefited so much from the New Deal policies that they weren‘t about to reject it.
It was no secret in the late sixties that Republicans were obsessed with the personal behavior of individuals. It was so well known that the joke about the primary difference between the two parties was government cops in the bedroom or in the boardroom. That freak J Edgar Hoover dispatched bedroom peeping agents. With his demise, an army of GOP Elmer Gantrys surfaced to charge that liberals engage in unspeakable acts. Is that the Republican Party that Phillips misses?
Or perhaps he misses the Republican Party that once had a social conscience. That espoused equality, freedom and civil liberties. Is Phillips old enough to remember such a time? A time when such values were more than rhetoric and not completely subordinate to the interests of business? Did any such time ever exist after passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments? Other than a streak of environmentalism from Teddy through Nixon (long since abandoned after the GOP corporate masters balked) the GOP hasn‘t been in the forefront of anything remotely resembling a social conscience for at least a century.
The rise of the organized religious fundamentalists in the GOP began at least a decade before Phillips acknowledges it. It had it’s first name by 1980 -- the "Moral Majority" -- and was instrumental in defeating Carter. What Phillips perceived by 1969 is no different from what emerged in 2000 or every election in between. What he fails to acknowledge is that holding on to these knuckle draggers created a liability in the GOP ledger books. A debt that would one day come due. The general condition of the economy probably had more to do with the elections in 1976 and 1992 than the southern roots of Carter and Clinton. If Democrats hadn’t nominated "what were we thinking" in 1988, Bush I would have lost as well. The one thing that Phillips gets right (and most Democrats get wrong) is that Clinton’s sexual infidelity played a decisive role in the 2000 election.
Phillips’ Republican Majority was based on deception. Rile up the (religious and racial) bigots to vote GOP and give them nothing but rhetoric. Many of us on the left appreciated the "end game" of Phillips’ formulation in 1969 even if we couldn’t exactly identify the fundamentalist religious component for a few years. Or maybe we knew it too well. We were products of it. We came by our hostility towards religion because we had lived it. The world where women were second class citizens -- and the churches reinforced that message. In a time when religions reinforced the inferior status of Blacks and other minorities. When we feared the "godless commies." Some of us wondered why "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and on our money wasn’t sacrilegious. The more our consciousness was raised, the easier it was for us to see the GOP "end game."
When Nixon and Saigon fell, we thought that the "end game" had been averted. That hope was short-lived as we watched in horror at the election of Reagan. A backlash against the social advances of the prior three decades began in earnest. Then there was the new horror of the GOP profligate debt creation at the federal level and the spend, spend, spend mentality that engulfed average people. Suddenly "keeping up with the Jones" became a virtue instead of a vice. Gambling became a national pastime instead of a sin. As "borrow and spend" was adopted by the GOP and individuals, they became better and better at projecting their sins onto the Democratic Party.
For such a smart man, it’s odd that Phillips seems so blind to the fact that it isn’t the Republican Party that has changed. Business in America, as facilitated by the GOP, changed. Main Street was taken over by Wall Street. Business in America stopped making things in favor of making "money." It transformed debt into a good thing. The GOP always accepts whatever business tells them is "good." Outsourcing was sold as a good idea in its original form of farming out government activities to the private sector and continues to be sold as good idea as the private sectors transfers jobs to other countries. "Economic Hit Men," the MIC, phony international aid and globalization are all "good things." And like forever, the GOP, along with their business owner brethren, has been hostile to labor and unions. (It’s no accident that government debt has increased and public services have deteriorated in tandem with the outsourcing of governmental activities. If FDR had managed WWII like GWB is managing Iraq, the annual cost would have tripled and it’s anyone’s guess how much longer it would have lasted.)
For such a smart man, it’s odd that he would have expected the knuckle draggers to embrace destroying SSI and Medicare (GOP wet dreams since the inception of both) -- programs they depend on. Or that the GOP could indefinitely postpone any action on the retrograde social issues they’ve been using for decades to get those folks to the polls. In fairness, back in 1969, I suppose someone like Phillips could imagine a permanent Republican Majority where their religious nutcases and racists were never publicly acknowledged. In those days, in polite company, people didn’t talk about personal matters such as religion, sex, money or racial prejudices. Or that those voters, along with those once known as John Bircher crazies, critical to the GOP success, could be kept locked up in the attic like forever.
For such a smart man, it’s odd that the GOP "end game" escaped Phillips. Personally, I think Phillips is either disingenuous or lets his personal, emotional biases get in the way of his analyses. He truly loathes the Bushes (made clear in his excellent "Bush Family Dynasty"), and therefore, it’s not surprising that he is currently so able to criticize the GOP. However, he also loathes Bill Clinton when at a public policy level, Clinton was very similar to Nixon except for the lip service Bill and Hillary give to the left. Loathing Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush is intellectually consistent. As is loving Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush. Loving Nixon, Reagan and Bush and loathing Clinton isn’t intellectually honest but is rational as political party bias. What doesn‘t compute is loving Nixon and Reagan and loathing Clinton and Bush. Added to that is that he found Perot attractive and criticizes Democrats for being too secular.
So, what does Phillips really want? Other than no political dynasties and government and personal fiscal responsibility, can he offer any answers that aren’t hypocritical, failed GOP policies or idealized GOP rhetoric? Doubtful. He likes McCain (although McCain’s current courting of the "evangelical" crowd gives him some pause). Phillips can’t be blind to the fact that McCain is Goldwater circa 2006. Goldwater was the darling of the Birchers, racists and militarists (the "Daisy" ad was true). Phillips would undoubtedly deny that he is part of that crowd. But in an almost classic Freudian slip, his mask dropped for a moment in an interview early 2006. Asked to give an example of his often repeated claim that the left went "too far" decades ago when Democrats were the majority, he responded with, "School busing." Hmm. Phillips doesn’t accept "Brown vs. the Board of Education" ("separate is inherently unequal") as settled law? Hell, even Alito wouldn’t say that in public and under oath. (Had this country embraced "Brown" with the vigor and resources we mostly reserve for bombing brown people in other countries, tens of thousands of poor Blacks would not have been stranded in New Orleans. Instead, with the support of racist creeps like Phillips, this country ignores "Brown" and our schools have returned to being as separate and unequal as ever according to Jonathan Kozol. And recently enshrined by the SCOTUS which overturned "Brown" without having the cajones to say that.) I’d have a lot more respect for Phillips if he owned his role in championing this GOP Franken-fascism. Until then, he’s just another whiny, cafeteria Republican bitching about the debt and religion giving his GOP stew a bad after taste.
(Democrats and liberals be forewarned. These "conservative" critics of Bush/Cheney are snakes and have not given up on their lifelong dream of destroying what remains of the programs and legislation that began with FDR's New Deal and continued through LBJ's administration. They still long to dismantle Social Security and Medicare. Their disappointment with GWB is that he chose to go to war in the Middle East instead of against the Middle Class at home.)