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When Ronald Reagan ushered the Dixiecrats into the Republican party and made deals with the Pope about women's rights across the globe, the Republican party changed drastically. I remember watching my mother's reaction to all of this; she was a very moderate Republican (though I don't think she was officially registered with the party). She was horrified. She and my father had been crazy for Goldwater and IKE. She voted for Reagan the first time, but was appalled at what he was doing to the Republican party. I'll never forget her reaction to the Republican convention ('94?). She said, "It looks like a Baptist church!" Separation of church and state was very important to my mother. She was a very well educated and strong woman. She died in the summer of 2000, in Oregon.
We all note that the election of 1994 swept in many Republican members of Congress who mentioned "family values," which was actually a code word meant to pander to certain flavors of Christians--Christians who felt victimized, who felt the world was out to get them. And the Republican party did that to people who were decent and kind, but who were afraid and had what I hesitantly call a victim mentality. I hesitate to say so because the expression has been misused and abused in politics, but in this case it was true. Never before in my lifetime had I seen so calculated an attempt to divide Americans. It was the weirdest thing. When I was growing up, Republicans and Democrats had their differences, but these were limited to what happened at the voting booth, and they had spirited conversations at parties and around campfires, but they did not malign each other. Politics and religion were considered impolite conversation among strangers; this was acceptable among friends--but come to think of it, I never heard anyone arguing about religion. (My mother wasn't fond of the Pope, but she certainly didn't argue with her Catholic friends about it.)
Patrick Buchanan now calls himself an old conservative, a paleoconservative, but he was part of that "religious right" movement: Has anyone forgotten his rallying cry about the "culture war"? He was as much a part of the whole charade as anyone, and the radio personalities and pundits who regard Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan as "old conservatives" aren't fooling anyone but themselves. There is a local radio personality where I live--and I haven't lived here long, so he's new to me--who insists that the Republican party should go back to the values of "Goldwater and Reagan." From what little I've read recently, Goldwater was appalled at what Reagan did. I can't imagine putting the two in any kind of similar category.
At around the same time of the "Republican Revolution" (which wasn't Republican at all at the time), the MEDIA started dividing people--Rush Limbaugh being the most notorious example. Scaring people and stirring them up made a lot of money for a guy from Cape Girardeau. It didn't matter that he wasn't educated and that he misinformed his audience. They listened; they quaked; they got angry. And that was addictive. Rush Limbaugh fed their provincial mentality. He provided evidence of almost all the evil in the world--he convinced them that what they already suspected was true: the us versus them theory; that is, just as the victims had suspected, there was an opposing force, an enemy, an opposing tribe, just waiting to gain power: the LIBERAL (or LIBRUL, as he pronounced it).
I was an independent voter, with the exception of the time I registered Republican in order to vote for Dole rather than Bush I in a primary.
Yet as time went on, people like me were labeled LIBRUL because we believed in the separation of church and state. So much of it came down to that. Where were independent moderates to go, after this weird "Republican Revolution"? Where, indeed, were even moderate, registered Republicans to go? My friend and mentor, a nationally recognized poet, grew up in an active old Republican family--again, one that valued the separation between church and state. It took her a little while to go from independent to Dem status. We recently celebrated her sixtieth birthday. She voted a straight Dem ticket when we voted early this election.
The "Republican Revolution" had repercussions not only for the Republican party. Only a fool would think that the electorate could remain static after such a shift. Did Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, or Rush Limbaugh think that such a displacement would not shift allegiances in the rest of the voting population? Could they have been this short-sighted?
There is no doubt that the Democratic party had to adjust to the realignment. Some in the party, who had enjoyed power before the recent populist movement within, weren't very happy. But most--from what I've seen--have weathered the shift very well, and more importantly, they've realized how dangerous and disastrous the "Republican Revolution" has been. They've been practical and strong.
This is the point at which ideology meets pragmatism and where pragmatism really counts, because pragmatism forces us to re-evaluate what our ideology really is. When your country has invaded and occupied another country which was of no real threat (again, against the old conservative thought, to say the least); and when the government is huge; and when the deficit is the largest it has ever been; and when the middle class is clawing to remain viable--then it is no wonder that the majority of us voted the way we did, enabled, finally, by a party that gave money to the states to use as the states deemed practical.
"Republican Revolution"--damned and dead.
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