Fanning the Flames: The Freedom Project Blog

11.05.2009

Grand New Party

By Shawn Healy

In the aftermath of successive bludgeonings at the polls in 2006 and 2008, there has been no shortage of post-mortem assessments of what plaques the Republican Party. Some suggest that unified Democratic control of Washington is a product of self-inflicted Republican scandals, the Bush Administration’s incompetence at home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan, an abandonment of the fiscal discipline central to party dogma, and in 2008, a flawed messenger in Senator John McCain.

As the Republican Party clings to the remaining vestiges of its power, namely a regional base in the Deep South, recent debates have centered on whether it should seek to build a “big tent” or retreat to ideological purity. Should they work with a barrier-breaking and popular president of the opposing party or throw a wrench in his agenda when opportunities arise? Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, in their 2008 book Grand New Party (Anchor Books, paperback and updated version in 2009), prefer an alternative strategy, one that seeks to bring working class workers of every racial background into the party’s fold in order to construct a permanent majority.

Their narrative begins with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Douthat and Salam suggest that FDR’s policies were fundamentally pro-family and placed a premium on self-sufficiency and work. The working class was their primary beneficiary, and in the process, the Democratic Party cemented its hold on this demographic for a generation. It wasn’t until Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society pushed policies that the authors argue offered perverse incentives that impeded family formation and individual initiatives, coupled with social turbulence, that working class voters were driven toward Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, a group he called the “Silent Majority.”

Nixon’s passions lied in the realm of foreign policy, and despite some early efforts to address working class concerns through a negative income tax, their demands were largely ignored, their votes taken for granted. This opened the door for Jimmy Carter’s one-time trial in 1976, but Ronald Reagan brought them back into the Republican fold in 1980 and 1984, and allowed his predecessor George HW Bush to win in 1988 on his coattails. Reagan remains the template by which Republicans measure themselves, and their memories of him focus on ideological, doctrinaire purity.

Douthat and Salam claim this hindsight is fundamentally flawed, for Reagan didn’t seek to disassemble the social safety net, but instead oversaw increases in spending, be they scaled back significantly. It was Reagan who signed legislation creating the Earned Income Tax Credit, a scaled back realization of Nixon’s negative income tax, and whose pro-family agenda resonated with working families struggling to make ends meet.

George HW Bush’s country club Republicanism, try as he did, failed to hold blue collar affection, opening the door for Ross Perot in 1992 to siphon away working class votes and deliver the presidency to Bill Clinton. Bob Dole’s 1996 challenge to his incumbency reverted to the tried and true tenets of fiscal and social conservatism, and his party was sentenced to four more years of a president who brilliantly usurped issues in their sweet spot via his “Third Way” agenda.

The authors consider George W Bush’s presidency, more than anything else, as a lost opportunity. His 2000 campaign premised on “compassionate conservatism” showed promise, but he faced an unanticipated challenge on the left from McCain, rather than the right of center attacks he expected from publisher Steve Forbes. They hold No Child Left Behind, warts and all, as the sole working class entreaty, as tax cuts became the all-encompassing mantra, and 9-11 pushed all domestic issues of the table. His failed Social Security privatization planned signaled premature lame duck status.

Though Douthat and Salam wrote in advance of the 2008 presidential outcome, the new preface to the paperback edition to their book addresses lessons from a year ago. They found McCain a failed candidate who never articulated a coherent domestic agenda and ceded a cake walk to his largely untested opponent. They proceed to offer a vision for the future of the Republican Party moving forward, one that forever stops the working class party pinball by pursuing tax policies that reward family creation and child bearing; market-based health care reforms that provide a conservative answer to the public option but address a genuine middle class anxiety; immigration reform that focuses on border control and naturalization policies sensitive to the needs of the labor market; universal school choice coupled with the decentralization of teaching from pre-K through higher ed; and land use policies that utilize a largely untapped frontier for uses (energy, not agriculture) demanded by urbanites.

As the Republican Party celebrates its first dose of good news in five years in the form of separate gubernatorial triumphs by conservative candidates in states that voted for Obama last fall (New Jersey and Virginia), it also likes its wounds from a bloody battle for an open House seat in Upstate New York, where a Democrat won for the first time since the Grant Administration. Governors-elect Bob McDonnell in Virginia, and Chris Christie in New Jersey, while flaunting solid conservative credentials, both campaigned on pocketbook issues, leaving the politics of symbolism to the talk radio punditry. In New York, on the other hand, a moderate Republican candidate was forced from the race in lue of a challenger from the Conservative Party who would go on to lose to the Democrat by a plurality.

I would suggest that these separate outcomes confirm the central hypothesis of Douthat and Salam. Moreover, I urge caution when reading the tea leaves for 2010 and beyond. Republican campaigns modeled off of McDonnell and Christie can sell even in blue states and swing districts, yet rock-ribbed interventions like those exercised by Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and their likes in New York spell a generation of Democratic dominance. Fiscal restraint, job creation, and balanced budgets register with voters in an era dominated by their antithesis, and those who seek to win on the basis of “God, gays, and guns” are nothing more than a quick path to a long walk in the woods.

Join the Freedom Project and the Chicago Young Republicans next Thursday for a public program featuring Reihan Salam and former White House speech writing Matt Latimer. I will review Latimer’s book, Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, in advance of next week’s event.

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SHAWN HEALY

Managing Director

McCormick Freedom Project

Shawn is responsible for overseeing and managing the operations associated with the McCormick Freedom Project. Additionally, he serves as the in house content expert and voice of museum through public speaking and original scholarship. Before joining the Freedom Project, he taught American Government, Economics, American History, and Chicago History at Community High School in West Chicago, IL and Sheboygan North High School in Wisconsin.

Shawn is a doctoral candidate within the Political Science Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he received his MA in Political Science. He is a 2001 James Madison Fellow from the State of Wisconsin and holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, History, and Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

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About Fanning the Flames and the McCormick Freedom Project


Fanning the Flames is a blog of the McCormick Freedom Project, which was started in 2006 by museum managing director Shawn Healy. The blog highlights the news of the day, in hopes of engaging readers in dialogue about freedom issues. Any views or opinions expressed on this blog represent those of the writers alone and do not represent an official opinion of the McCormick Freedom Project.



Founded in 2005, the McCormick Freedom Project is part of the McCormick Foundation. The Freedom Project’s mission is to enable informed and engaged participation in our democracy by demonstrating the relevance of the First Amendment and the role it plays in the ongoing struggle to define and defend freedom. The museum offers programs and resources for teachers, students, and the general public.


First Amendment journalism initiative


The Freedom Project recently launched a new reporting initiative with professional journalists Tim McNulty and Jamie Loo. The goal is to expand and promote the benefits of lifelong civic engagement among citizens of all ages, through original reporting, commentary and news aggregation on First Amendment and freedom issues. Please visit the McCormick Freedom Project's news Web site, The Post-Exchange at