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Effecting a Realignment, Part Two
What does it mean for there to be a realignment, what is there to be gained from such a development, and how can it be effected? That is the question.
There have been five such events in American history: in 1800, 1828, 1860, 1894, and 1932. Some would add 1980 to the list, but I think that Ronald Reagan and the Republicans failed to capitalize adequately on the gains they made that year. Had Reagan run a principled, partisan campaign in 1984, things might have been different.
In every one of the five cases listed above, those in opposition were offered a golden opportunity by the party in power. In every case, those in opposition seized that opportunity and reoriented national policy in the aftermath. In every case, those in opposition presented themselves to the general public as a party of principle and acted as one after achieving victory. In every case, they seized upon what many perceived as a threat to republican liberty and the American way of life and acted to eliminate the putative threat.
When the Federalists in Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 and John Adams signed them into law, they opened the door to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Jeffersonian Republicans. When Henry Clay threw his support in Congress to John Quincy Adams in 1824, thwarted the Presidential ambitions of Andrew Jackson, and managed to pass into law large parts of a Hamiltonian program that he would eventually call “the American system,” he opened the door to Jackson, Martin van Buren, and the coalition that came to be called the Democratic Party. In the 1850s, when the proponents of Negro slavery pressed successfully for a repeal of the Missouri Compromise and Roger Taney and his proslavery Supreme Court handed down their decision in the Dred Scott case, they opened the door to Abraham Lincoln and our nation’s second Republican Party. When the Democratic Party split in the wake of the financial Panic of 1893 and the proponents of silver coinage and inflation within that party turned on Grover Cleveland and threatened to take over the party, it brought new life to the Republicans in the congressional elections of 1894 and paved the way for a decisive face-off between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan in 1896. And when Herbert Hoover responded to the economic crisis of 1929 by encouraging the Federal Reserve Board to keep interest rates high, by signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and by raising taxes and deepening the recession, it opened the door to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party.
Had Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, and FDR proved feckless in office, they would have squandered victory. But they managed successfully to represent the Federalists, the Whigs, the slave power, the Bryan Democrats, and the Hoover Republicans as a threat to republican liberty and the American way of life, and in the process they effected a return to first principles.
I would submit that Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, and Reid have offered today’s Republicans a comparable opportunity. Like Herbert Hoover, they have managed economic affairs in such a manner as to prolong and deepen a recession. And like the Federalists in 1798, the Whigs in the 1820s, and the slave-power conspirators of the 1850s, they have acted in such a manner as to suggest that republican liberty is in peril.
What the Republicans have to do to effect a realignment is to nationalize the congressional elections by taking every major bill that the Democrats have passed and representing it as part of a larger plan aimed at reducing the American people to servitude. This should not be hard to do.
Barack Obama promised to “transform” America, and he has done his best to make good on that promise. We have seen the Democrats mount a systematic campaign to steal elections with the help of ACORN and similar organizations. We have watched them press to eliminate the secret ballot in unionization campaigns. We have stood aghast as they shoved through Congress on a single-party vote a series of bills mammoth in length, incomprehensible even after they were passed, and unread by those who voted on them. We have witnessed a massive expansion of the administrative state, and money has been spent in such a fashion as to threaten the country with bankruptcy. There is a crisis. It has deepened, and everyone knows it. Moreover, as Rahm Emanuel promised, his party has not let that crisis “go to waste.” It has exploited it to effect a radical transformation of the country – and the American people are aware that they have been had.
As I said in my earlier post, if the Republicans re-establish themselves as a party of principle – as a counter-conspiracy intent on defending republican liberty – and do so by means of a new Contract with America, they will win a very large victory, indeed; and they will have positioned themselves in such a way as to be able to effect a lasting realignment.
In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt summed up his assault on the Republican Party, on the Hoover administration, and on the financiers and titans of industry so prominent in the 1920s with the following words: “A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.” What FDR said on that occasion was untrue, but in the context of the Great Depression his rhetoric was effective.
Today, however, such a claim would be well-founded. A small group of men and women – lead by Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, and Reid and backed with enthusiasm by virtually every Democrat in the Senate and the House – really has sought “an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives”; and Americans in ever-increasing numbers now worry that their lives will no longer be free, that their liberty will no longer be real, and that they will no longer have the wherewithal with which to pursue happiness as they understand it.
All that the Republicans have to do over the next few years, if they wish to effect a realignment, is to articulate the inchoate fears inspired by Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, and Reid and to spell out what they intend to do to roll back the administrative state and lay those fears to rest. Are the Republicans up to the challenge? This is the question we now face.
All that I can say at this time is that encouragement has been accorded the Republicans. As I pointed out in the second of my two posts yesterday, the Tea-Party Movement in every corner of the land has announced itself as a credible threat to Republicans in Name Only. Witness the ascendancy of Sharron Angle in Nevada, of Joe Miller in Alaska, of Marco Rubio in Florida, of Rand Paul in Kentucky, and of Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. These days even that John McCain wannabee Lindsey Graham is assiduously toeing the line. The times they are a-changin’.
Published in General
Had Reagan run a principled, partisan campaign in 1984, things might have been different.
Dr. Rahe, I’m curious about that passage in your post. Could you please elucidate?
What the Republicans have to do…take every major bill that the Democrats have passed and represent it as part of a larger plan aimed at reducing the American people to servitude. … if the Republicans re-establish themselves as a party of principle – as a counter-conspiracy intent on defending republican liberty – and do so by means of a new Contract with America, they will win a very large victory, indeed; and they will have positioned themselves in such a way as to be able to effect a lasting realignment.
United We Stand…For What?
This is the lasting question that, unanswered, leaves us without principle. Defending Liberty – against government servitude. This is certainly the core of the Tea Party.
Is it the core of the Republican Party? Is it the Meat? Can the Republicans center around this idea and re-position themselves for this re-alignment?
I hope so. There has not been as propitious a time since 1980, and that was leader-based. We do not have a Reagen. However, we do have a Rahe! Thank you for your Soft Despotism work – it is crucial. Spread this essay far and wide to Republicans.
I’m glad Mark Lewis made the point: we do not have a central figure yet to lead the realignment. While leaderlessness has been crucial to the Tea Party movement so far, I would guess every conservative on this site feels the same anxiety I do… who will ultimately lead the conservative resurgence? While I appreciate the hard work the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins do for the cause, the movement will be short-lived if we do not have a serious, highly competent, and effective leader emerge for 2012.
This is why I pray Mitch Daniels or Haley Barbour choose to run for the presidency. The current national mood will not lead to a generational change unless someone emerges as a transformative leader in contrast to the incompetence of the current administration. These two men are transformative.
In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt summed up his assault on the Republican Party, on the Hoover administration, and on the financiers and titans of industry so prominent in the 1920s with the following words: “A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.” What FDR said on that occasion was untrue, but in the context of the Great Depression his rhetoric was effective.
Had Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, and FDR proved feckless in office, they would have squandered victory. But they managed successfully to represent the Federalists, the Whigs, the slave power, the Bryan Democrats, and the Hoover Republicans as a threat to republican liberty and the American way of life, and in the process they effected a return to first principles.
FDR effected a return to first principles? He spat on the Constitution and unscrupulously manipulated people.
What FDR proved is that perception is everything in elections.
Paul A. Rahe, Guest Contributor:
In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt summed up his assault… “For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.” What FDR said on that occasion was untrue, but in the context of the Great Depression his rhetoric was effective.
Had Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, and FDR proved feckless in office, they would have squandered victory. But they managed successfully to represent the Federalists, the Whigs, the slave power, the Bryan Democrats, and the Hoover Republicans as a threat to republican liberty and the American way of life, and in the process they effected a return to first principles.
What FDR proved is that perception is everything in elections.
To be fair, Dr Rahe didn’t say whose first principles FDR returned us to. (Those of Progressivism or modern liberalism, maybe?)
Up until “and in the process they effected a return to first principles”, the paragraph rings true. FDR sure didn’t squander his victory.
As you say, he proved perception is everything in elections.
When I spoke of the Reagan campaign in 1984, what I had in mind is that Reagan presented himself as President of all the people and sought a personal landslide, which he got. He neglected partisan concerns and failed to argue the case for some of the more controversial things that he intended to do. In consequence, 1984 was not a great year for the Republicans in Congress, and in 1986 the Republicans lost control of the Senate — and Reagan then found himself on the defensive (I have Iran-Contra in mind). To achieve a realignment, one must press one’s advantage and divide the House. No President who pretends to be above party can be effective.
On the subject of first principles: if one reads FDR’s Commonwealth Club speech, his first and second inaugural, and his 1944 message to Congress, one can see that he couched his argument to the American people in terms drawn from the Declaration of Independence. He may have been disingenuous, but he tried to justify his policy by going to the source of all American political wisdom. The only Republican leader in the last seventy years to have persistently grounded his argument in an appeal to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was Ronald Reagan. To effect a realignment, one must follow his example and persuade the American people that FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society, and Barack Obama’s New Foundation constitute an abandonment of our first principles and not, as Roosevelt contended, a natural inference from them.
Thank you.
By the way, I always thought Iran-Contra was totally an inside-the-beltway phenomenon. I don’t think it hurt Reagan with the people. And to the extent that it might have, it was reversed by Oliver North’s defiant performance in the Congressional hearings.
Thanks for clarifying, Dr Rahe.
No wonder Aaron and I were confused at first. We already see the policy of FDR and his intellectual heirs as abandoning our first principles, and we maybe forget how successfully others have claimed such policy naturally follows from our first principles.
Or rather, Aaron wasn’t forgetting, but I was.
Realignment? Realignment to do what? You speak as if the end goal of realignmnent is to rid ourselves of Pelosi and company. What do we do the next day? Go back to W-style governing only less? Repeal Obamacare of course. But maybe we could really stick to conservative dogma. Like maybe we could repeal the prescription drug benefit? We’ll be out on our butts in two years.
Thanks for the clarification.
Honesty and courage. Is it any wonder voters look outside D.C. for their Presidents?
This is a fascinating and vital history lesson. Many thanks.