"When 'America Felt Itself to Be Losing Out'"

"In Ganz's account, the 1992 election was a transition point, announcing the first major rumblings of discontent with the post-1970s policy consensus: Challengers to the established order questioned welfare restraint, deregulation, and deference to the private sector on foundational questions of economic management and resource distribution. As the national mood soured, the two-party system received its strongest challenge in nearly a century; civil unrest exploded across the country's biggest cities; and radical voices, especially on the right, grew in popularity."

At The New Republic, Aaron Timms reviews John Ganz's When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.

"When the Cold War Ends, It Loosens Not Just the Motivation for Conservatives to Get Involved Internationally, but Also the Motivation for Them to Champion Democracy"

"We think of the end of the Cold War as reshaping the geopolitical landscape, but it also really changed economics and politics in the United States. There is a major recession in the U.S. at the time of the '92 election, and parts of California that have been propped up by government spending and the aerospace industry had collapsed almost overnight. There was this sense of uncertainty about what the world is going to look like going forward and who is going to prosper and who is going to fail. It's also at a pivot point in decades of deindustrialization and shifting toward a knowledge economy and a service economy. So things really were in flux, and I think the politics of the day reflect that."

Ian Ward at Politico interviews Nicole Hemmer, author of Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.

"The Problem for Trump Is He Has Yet to Find His Willie Horton"

"'He spent eight years as vice president and the solid Reaganites were always suspicious of Bush 41 for not being conservative enough. And he endured a lot of lousy press coverage that was a caricature of him.'
"'The turning point was the convention,' Grissom said. 'That was our reintroduction of Bush and our first real opportunity to define him without filters. People saw him through the convention, the convention speech. "No new taxes." "Kinder, gentler."'"

Adam Nagourney at The New York Times writes that "Republicans are looking back at the 1988 race as a beacon of hope in a bleak political landscape."

German Lopez at Vox writes about Donald Trump's embrace of Richard Nixon's "Law & Order" politics.

And Jeff Greenfield at Politico calls the 1996 election "the least suspenseful, least intriguing, least consequential election of my lifetime, your lifetime, anybody’s lifetime."

"The 'John the Baptist' of the 'Disenchanted, Displaced Noncollege White Voter'"

"For the sizable portion of the population not old enough to remember Perot's renegade campaign, it is hard to describe just how thoroughly he captivated media attention and the public imagination, but a single statistic makes the case: He won nearly 19 percent of the popular vote, the largest share for a third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. He split the white vote with Bush, who blamed him for handing the presidency to Clinton, whose winning plurality was just 43 percent. (Exit polling disagreed.) Arguably, American politics has never been quite the same."

Todd S. Purdum at The Atlantic writes that Ross Perot showed that "[t]here is a big chunk of voters who feel disaffected, harmed by free trade, threatened by demographic change, and attracted to an eccentric outsider who promises to upend the status quo."

Wouldn't Be Prudent

"Bush's tax pledge roused conservatives but it turned out to be notoriously misjudged. Once in office, facing a federal deficit that had quietly ballooned under his predecessor, and a Congress controlled by Democrats, the 41st president was forced to renege on his promise.
"President Bush did leave two significant legislative marks: the Clean Air Act Amendments, signed into law in 1990, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which Bush made law in the same year."

Paul Lewis at The Guardian reports the death of George Bush.

Jonathan Chait at New York offers appreciations, of sorts.

As does Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

"Not Bad Luck but a Trap"

"In late March 1987, Hart spent a weekend on a Miami-based yacht called Monkey Business. Two young women joined the boat when it sailed to Bimini. While the boat was docked there, one of the women took a picture of Hart sitting on the pier, with the other, Donna Rice, in his lap. A month after this trip, in early May, the man who had originally invited Hart onto the boat brought the same two women to Washington. The Miami Herald had received a tip about the upcoming visit and was staking out the front of Hart’s house. (A famous profile of Hart by E. J. Dionne in The New York Times Magazine, in which Hart invited the press to 'follow me around,' came out after this stakeout—not before, contrary to common belief.) A Herald reporter saw Rice and Hart going into the house through the front door and, not realizing that there was a back door, assumed—when he didn't see her again—that she had spent the night.
"Amid the resulting flap about Hart's 'character' and honesty, he quickly suspended his campaign (within a week), which effectively ended it."

In The Atlantic, James Fallows asks, "Was Gary Hart Set Up?"

"He's Discarded the Dog Whistle in Favor of a Bull Horn"

"These cynical methods are precisely what the leaders of the Party of Lincoln have spent the last decade trying to bury. Speaking before the NAACP national convention in July 2005, Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ken Mehlman acknowledged the party's 'Southern Strategy' and directly apologized: 'I am here as Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.' In 2010, Michael Steele—the first black head of the RNC—admitted in a talk with students at DePaul University that Republicans had given minorities little reason to vote for them: 'For the last 40-plus years we had a Southern Strategy that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.' Following Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat, RNC chair Reince Priebus presided over what came to be known as 'the autopsy report,' which laid out a roadmap for Republican candidates, emphasizing that future electoral success depended on reaching out to ethnic minorities and young people.
"Trump seems to have missed the memo."

Robert P. Jones at The Atlantic discusses how Donald Trump "has resurrected divisive GOP campaign tactics that target and alienate minorities."

"Taking a Hard Pass"

"Some other recent conventions have had several lawmakers who notably skipped their party's nominating event. In 2008, many vulnerable GOP senators didn't attend in a year where outgoing President George W. Bush's approval rating was abysmal. In 2012, many moderate Democrats also skipped out on President Obama's convention.
"But never before in recent history have so many prominent party officials boycotted the event or found convenient other reasons not to attend because they either didn't approve of or were uncomfortable with their party's presumptive nominee."

Jessica Taylor at NPR reports on Republican no-shows at the party's convention.

"Conservatism Itself Has Lost Its Identity to Politics"

"The mythology promulgated by the conservative movement has it that a candidate who naturally expresses both Christian conservatism and Goldwater-Reagan conservatism must be out there somewhere. But the record of three decades since Reagan won the nomination with support from both camps suggests otherwise: in a full generation, there has never been a candidate equally appealing to both kinds of conservative. What reason is there to think there ever will be one?"

Daniel McCarthy in The American Conservative looks at Republican factionalism.

"No Experiments"

"In their times of greatest success, Republicans came from the middle class. Republican politicians felt middle-class aspirations and anxieties as their own. They would do things that tangibly helped the people who sent them to office: hold taxes down, yes, but also ensure public safety, clean water, affordable state university tuition, and more. To fill the vacuum left by Barack Obama, Republicans will need to rediscover their heritage of the Nixon-Ford years, and of governors like New York's Thomas Dewey and California's Earl Warren."


David Frum in The Atlantic gives advice to the Republican Party.

"The Return to Bushism"

"The question is whether the rest of the party is ready to go along. After having loaded all their failures onto George W. Bush's back, and cut him adrift to save conservative ideology from the taint of his undeniable failure, can the Republicans attach themselves once again to another Bush?"


Jonathan Chait in New York looks at Jeb's chances.

"Throw Millions Out of Work—as Long as We Get a Chance for Our Turn at the Trough"

"Then we will proceed to do exactly what Enron or AIG or Goldman Sachs wanted us to do all along. We will convince ourselves that these terrible things happened to us because markets aren't free enough—that our only mistake was in not carrying our campaigns for deregulation or tax cuts to their logical conclusions. After Enron collapsed, let's recall, the nation decided that Enron had been right all along: California had such terrible problems because it was run by tree-hugging liberals who stifled entrepreneurship with their preposterous interfering ways.
"And today, after one of the clearest lessons in deregulatory folly that history is likely to provide, we are once again on a national crusade against regulation. We have filled Congress with clear-eyed believers who know that economic rules are an affront to freedom itself. We have signed up by the millions for Tea Party groups organized by anti-regulatory outfits like FreedomWorks—which, in its earlier incarnation as Citizens for a Sound Economy, took some $20,000 in funds from none other than Enron."


In Salon, Thomas Frank revisits a 2011 article declaring that America was still living in the "Age of Enron."

"I’m at Ground Zero in the Saga of Republicans Closing Their Eyes to Any Facts or Evidence that Conflict with Their Dogma"

"I am disinclined to think that Republicans are yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy. They comfort themselves with the fact that they held the House (due to gerrymandering) and think that just improving their get-out-the-vote system and throwing a few bones to the Latino community will fix their problem. There appears to be no recognition that their defects are far, far deeper and will require serious introspection and rethinking of how Republicans can win going forward. The alternative is permanent loss of the White House and probably the Senate as well, which means they can only temporarily block Democratic initiatives and never advance their own.
"I’ve paid a heavy price, both personal and financial, for my evolution from comfortably within the Republican Party and conservative movement to a less than comfortable position somewhere on the center-left. Honest to God, I am not a liberal or a Democrat. But these days, they are the only people who will listen to me. When Republicans and conservatives once again start asking my opinion, I will know they are on the road to recovery."

Following the election, Bruce Bartlett in The American Conservative reflects on becoming an apostate.

The Ghost of Lee Atwater

"Of course, Romney isn’t interested in the facts; he's interested in associating Obama with black and Hispanic undesirables bent on collecting welfare benefits and robbing white elderly people of their health insurance. The son of a politician who walked out of the 1964 Republican convention because of its opposition to blacks could well end up encouraging anti-black sentiments at the 2012 Republican convention. Like Poppy Bush, Romney is not a racist himself. He is, arguably, something worse: A man who, because he has no particularly pronounced views himself, is willing to say just about anything to get himself elected president."

Timothy Noah at The New Republic explains why Mitt Romney keeps talking about welfare and Medicare.

As do Thomas B. Edsall at The New York Times, Ed Kilgore at The Washington Monthly, and Jonathan Chait at New York.

Ron Fournier in National Journal writes that the "Romney campaign is either recklessly ignorant of the facts, some of which they possess–or it is lying about why (and how) it is playing the race card."

(And a few months later, Rick Perstein at The Nation presents audio recording of Lee Atwater's infamous 1981 interview on exploiting racism.)

"A Politics Based on Realities, not Phantoms"

"A quarter century ago, Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale offered Americans substantial policy alternatives. In 2010, by contrast, we see the parties hammering each other over differences barely more perceptible than those of 1880. Republicans rage against the Democrats’ bailouts, takeovers, deficits—yet all three commenced under George W. Bush, not Barack Obama. Almost every concept in Obama’s intensely controversial health plan has at one point or another been advanced by a senior Republican, from Bob Dole to Mitt Romney. I type these words having just watched Fox News’s Glenn Beck liken President Obama’s call for voluntary national service to something out of Maoist China. Obama’s service program barely differs in form, content, and rhetoric from Bush’s program, which in turn was almost identical to the program created by the elder President Bush in 1989.
"Reading a speech like Ingersoll’s—or listening to today’s talk radio—you almost wonder whether strident rhetoric, then as now, functions more as a substitute for policy differences than as their expression."

David Frum in The Atlantic argues that Republicans today should emulate the Mugwumps of the 1880s.

Tear Down This Myth

"To many American conservatives, the answer to those questions is simple: Reagan stared down the Soviet Union. And the Berlin Wall speech stands as the dramatic symbol of Reagan's challenge and triumph.
"But those who say this ignore the actual history and context of the speech."

James Mann in the Los Angeles Times revisits the subject of Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War.

"I’ll Spend the Goddamn Money"

"But even if Obama fails, the authors offer one large consolation. There is an art to losing, too — in a way that can tee up the issue for future presidents. Truman lost but nonetheless redefined the terms of debate, setting the stage for Medicare (which is why Johnson honored Truman when he signed it into law). Compare him with Clinton, who walked away from the wreckage of his health care plan and rarely mentioned the subject again. According to the authors, this allowed opponents to gain control over the spin and history, so that the Democrats’ signature cause slipped out of political sight for a decade."

Robert B. Reich in The New York Times reviews David Blumenthal and James A. Morone's The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office.

The Field General

"'I think there is no doubt that he had a greater impact on conservative and Republican economic philosophy than anybody else. More than Laffer, more than Reagan.' And the change he helped bring about was not just in the party’s attitude toward taxes, Mr. Ornstein said; Republicans, he said, were 'no longer worshiping at the shrine of a balanced budget, for better and for worse.'"

Adam Clymer in The New York Times writes an obit for Jack Kemp.

"Something Deep in the DNA"

"But there is another rendition of the story of modern conservatism, one that doesn't begin with Goldwater and doesn't celebrate his libertarian orientation. It is a less heroic story, and one that may go a much longer way toward really explaining the Republican Party's past electoral fortunes and its future."

Neal Gabler in the Los Angeles Times argues that the true father of current conservativism is Joseph McCarthy.

"Eyes of a Killer"

"As a student at Newberry College, he took charge of the College Republicans National Committee, recognizing the GOP's need to bring more youth into the party. Under his leadership, the organization became a national force. As his success grew, so did his ambition, and it wasn't long before national Republican leaders took notice. Before leaving school to work for the late South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, Atwater orchestrated the campaign of Karl Rove, his protégé, in a bid to take over the College Republicans. Rove eventually won the election after the head of the Republican National Committee, George H.W. Bush, interceded on his behalf. The battle for the 2000 presidential election echoes loudly."

Antonino D'Ambrosio in The Nation reviews Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.