By Brigitte L. Nacos
In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an interesting essay about the rise of Goldwater Republicans that is as relevant today as it was in the 1960s. “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” Hofstadter began his article in Harper’s magazine. “In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.”
Behind the Goldwater movement Hofstadter recognized the deeply seated “paranoid style” in American politics characterized by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” He noted furthermore that the right-wingers of the mid-1960s felt that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.”
Were Hofstadter alive today, he would surely recognize the same “paranoid style” in the rise of the Tea Party and its power that has moved the Republican Party and its candidates to the extreme right. Today’s right-wingers are driven by the imagined threat that the Democratic Party is conspiring to enact a socialist/communist agenda, that the “illegitimate” President Obama in particular is “un-American” and acting against the national interest, and that Obama is a Muslim or a Muslim sympathizer who conspires to bring Islamic sharia law to America.
Not just right-wingers and their elite guardians with deep pockets but literally all Republican candidates for the presidential nomination are either part of the movement or see themselves forced to join the battle against the evil, conspiratorial forces that undermine America.
Mitt Romney, the allegedly moderate among the GOP’s presidential hopefuls, said the other day, “The president said he wants to fundamentally transform America, I kind of like America. I’m not looking for it to be fundamentally transformed into something else. I don’t want it to become like Europe.” I guess he meant the allegedly socialist systems of our European allies.
Newt Gingrich presents himself as the defender of the true America and President Obama as a threat to America’s creed. "I am an American exceptionalist,” he said during the campaign. “He [President Obama] believes in fundamentally undermining the America we inherited. I believe in fundamentally rebuilding the America we inherited."
And former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum chastised President Obama the other day for “absolutely un-American activities” and explained that he, Santorum, was a candidate for the presidency in order to leave the country in better shape for his children.
In their book Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System , Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen wrote, “The right-wing populism we are experiencing today is significant because it represents the conjoining of three separate, distinct, and not easily reconcilable strands of conservatism, economic conservatism, small-government libertarians, and social conservatism.” I think that the two pollsters are right. Looking at the GOP’s presidential candidates, they have signed on to the objectives of all three strands, just as most Republican members of Congress signed Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge.
As The Economist editorialized recently,
“Nowadays, a [Republican] candidate must believe not just some but all of the following things: that abortion should be illegal in all cases; that gay marriage must be banned even in states that want it; that the 12m illegal immigrants, even those who have lived in America for decades, must all be sent home; that the 46m people who lack health insurance have only themselves to blame; that global warming is a conspiracy; that any form of gun control is unconstitutional; that any form of tax increase must be vetoed, even if the increase is only the cancelling of an expensive and market-distorting perk; that Israel can do no wrong and the “so-called Palestinians”, to use Mr Gingrich’s term, can do no right; that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and others whose names you do not have to remember should be abolished.”
It might well be that the American populace and electorate moved markedly to the right. But whether the victor in the GOP’s nominating process will produce a Republican victory in November and the party’s complete control in Washington is far from clear.
Because any Republican nominee will be burdened by supporting the complete right-wing package, there will be an opportunity for progressives, the Democratic Party, and President Obama.
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