1968 Deja Vu?
November 5th, 2006
As we swing into the final days of this year’s election, the pundits are predicting that the Democrats will experience a resurgence and what I term the GOP counterrevolution will suffer enough loses to either lose control of both houses of Congress or come very close to it. A few op ed writers are even daring to say that the Counterrevolution may be nearing the end of its run, that the coalition that has ruled our national government since the Reagan Administration is imploding on itself much as the New Deal Coalition fell apart in 1968.
What makes these predictions so intriguing is, of course, the presence of an unpopular and politically divisive war. It is now standard History 101 that the Johnson administration and the old FDR coalition fell apart over Vietnam. The conventional interpretations hold that Vietnam had several drastic impacts: first, it helped to start the split of blue-collar voters away from the Democrats, a blow from which they are still recovering; second, it derailed the civil rights movement causing a cynicism among people of color about both parties that still exists, third, it alienated key liberal groups that had helped to provide intellectual and social capital for the party for over half a century. Some would argue the war caused the Democratic Party to lose its moral center, a center it is still trying to find.
Of course, there were warning signs before 1968. The 1964 convention with its dramatic delegate challenge by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the loss of what used to be called the “solid South” to Barry Goldwater’s naked states’ rights appeal signaled that the split between hardline segregationists and the mainstream of the party that had been festering for most of the century finally became irreparable.
Four decades later, there are signs that George W. Bush may well be destroying the Reagan Coalition over a war, just as LBJ did the New Deal Coalition. As several commentators have pointed out, the major crack in the Counterrevolutionary Coalition has come from the religious right. This creates a fascinating parallel with 1968 and civil rights. As Lyndon Johnson became more absorbed by Vietnam, the administration shuttled civil rights to the side, so that by 1968 leaders like Martin Luther King had openly broken with the administration while more militant leaders were demanding “freedom now.” Meanwhile Johnson himself talked openly of need a “vacation” from civil rights.
A similar situation is now growing with the religious right. They signed on with Ronald Reagan and wove their own social agenda with that of the GOP so that at least in the party platform the two became virtually the same. The 2000 and 2004 GOP platforms both were chocked full of promises to the religious right about everything from abortion to education. Like some of Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation, initiatives coming from the Bush White House on issues like stem cell research and Supreme Court appointments raised hopes among the religious right that their day had come.
Then came 9/11 and after that Afghanistan and Iraq. The main Congressional power broker between the religious right and the GOP, Tom DeLay, was destroyed by scandal. The major White House liaison with the religious right, Karl Rove, has seemed preoccupied with shoring up support for the war and, some say, even has lost not only his power but his election magic.
Since “values” supposedly won the 2004 election for George W. Bush and a lot of those values voters came from the religious right, they have been expecting the inevitable payoff. Instead issues such as gay marriage, which helped mobilize voters in 2004, no longer seem major concerns of the administration. Even more critically, the “party of values” has turned out not to have any values of its own, as scandal after scandal has hit the GOP. The Foley scandal probably hurt the worst, for it suggested that the GOP was willing to look the other way when one of its members committed what the religious right regard as an unpardonable sin. The surest sign of a major break is the spate of books, articles, and interviews by various evangelical leaders asserting that they were “used” by this administration, a line eerily like one uttered by African Americans in 1968.
Whether this breach can be repaired is still an open question. Clearly evangelicals supplied the margin of victory for the GOP in 2000 and 2004. However, the feeling seems to be growing among evangelicals that the GOP seems to regard their religious allies somewhat like many Democrats still regard people of color, “Where else do they have to go?” The answer to that question may well decide who next occupies the White House.
The Strange Death of Liberal America » 2008 Politics Predictions --
