I’ve been doing a little review of the past for a book I’m hoping to have completed by January. Its not the book on the Duluth School District that I used to threaten to write. That will have to wait. No, I’ve been thinking about the long road from the turbulent 1970s to today’s Debt Crisis. The Democratic Party took a major zig zag in the future’s direction because of its reaction to the Days of Rage at the 1968 Democratic Convention. The result prevented Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey from ever becoming the Party’s Presidential nominee again because of the work of the Party’sMcGovern Fraser Commission
Wikipedia’s description of the commission’s results at the 1972 Democratic Convention sound a little like the Tea Party’s influence on the Republican Party.
The Illinois primary required voters to select individual delegates, not presidential candidates. Most Illinois delegation members were uncommitted and were controlled or influenced by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the leader of the Chicago political machine. The delegation was challenged by McGovern supporters arguing that the results of the primary did not create a diverse enough delegation in terms of women and minorities. The credentials committee, headed by Patricia Roberts Harris, rejected the entire elected delegation, including elected women and minorities, and seated an unelected delegation led by Chicago Alderman William S. Singer, Jesse Jackson and pledged to George McGovern.
The California primary was “winner-take-all,” which was contrary to the delegate selection rules. So even though McGovern only won the California primary by a 5% electoral margin, he won all 271 of their delegates to the convention. The anti-McGovern group argued for a proportional distribution of the delegates, while the McGovern forces stressed that the rules for the delegate selection had been set and the Stop McGovern alliance was trying to change the rules after the game. As with the credential fight, McGovern’s army carried the day effectively handing the nomination to McGovern.
During this Era Republicans, like me, enjoyed ridiculing the Democratic Party’s emphasis on giving minorities of every description “sub caucus” status. This is the origin of the GOP accusation that Democrats are a party of special interests.
Of course, today’s GOP is a party of special interests too and they can be every bit as myopic as the Democrats of 1972. As a Republican delegate to many state GOP conventions of that time I paid close attention to the gradual and inevitable stranglehold of the GOP by its own special interests.
One of the first steps was a not very controversial change in the distribution of delegates to states at the Republican National Presidential Nominating Conventions. No more were states awarded delegates based on the electoral votes cast by the state. Instead State delegations were based on the size of the Republican vote. No more could a big state count on a big delegation just because of the number of voters residing within its borders. To get a big delegation a state’s voters would have to vote for the Republican candidate for President. Smaller more Republican states would begin playing a much bigger role in future conventions.
Its hard to fault this decision. It was certainly less obtrusive than the McGovern-Fraser rules. But its implementation had the same effect. The first Republican elected under these rules after Nixon was Ronald Reagan in 1980 whose campaign appealed pretty universally to all fifty states. Over time, however, these rules kept favoring “neo-conservative” sections of the nation like the South which had begun turning to Republicans with Strom Thurmond’s defection from the Democratic Party in 1948. During the Reagan years dozens of Democratic Congressman officially became Republicans.
At about the same time Republican conservative activists like Richard Vigurie developed amazing data bases of voters for fund raising purposes. These activists promoted the campaigns of the most conservative of candidates like Senator Jesse Helms. Fighting school bussing to promote racial integration became a major Republican issue. So too was “state’s rights” with its call to a Confederate era Ethos of keeping the Union out of the Southern state’s business. So was “Right to work” legislation which had its start in the South as that section of the nation attempted to roll back union power.
Even before the Reagan years the GOP resented what it considered a liberal bias by the press. The best example of this Republican enmity can be found in Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” which prominiantly, if secretly, target journalists. Over the past several decades the national media has taken on an increasingly conservative cast. For those of us in our sixties who remember “Uncle” Walter Cronkite’s mild pronouncements that the War in Vietnam was a mistake there can be no comparison with what one hears from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News today.
The combination of party delegate selection rules, the skill of single issue fundraisers (e.g. NRA, Anti-Abortion) and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh has led to repeated purgings of Party moderates. Contrary to Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment “One shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican,” the GOP has abandoned his “Big Tent.” If a lifetime Republican from the Northeast or Midwest won’t follow the Republican dogma with complete fidelity he/she becomes a RINO. That’s a “Republican in Name Only.” Since such a Republican isn’t really a Republican ergo: Ronald Reagan’s commandment doesn’t apply.
Goodbye Better Angles. Hello a House Divided.
This is a hastily written post and being as short as it is there’s a lot more to take into account. It does explain, I think, why there are no remaining Republicans willing to dissent from the Party’s group think. How ironic that the party that once fought and still condemns “political correctness” has become a party of “dittoheads.” No thinking required
