As we enter a supposed “post partisan” age in Washington, politicians and pundits have begun yearning for and writing about that “pre-partisan” age – usually set during the New Deal period and following – when our political parties (Republicans particularly) were populated by “moderates,” working together for the common good. Forgotten are these words from moderate icon Harry Truman: “I don’t like bipartisans. Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.” But this revisionist effort is not only historically inaccurate; at a time when our politics have become so complex, the linear “liberal/moderate/conservative” nomenclature has proven insufficient, further dividing us.
The author of last year’s best-seller, Nixonland, Rick Perlstein rightly proposed that the 1964 Republican Convention was a watershed event, revealing the chasm between “liberal” or “moderate” Republicans and “insurgent conservatives” (his words.) At the time, the most significant policy issues defining this gap related how to fight the Cold War (either offensively or defensively), and how fast to grow the federal government. The latter question being particularly acute throughout the 50’s with “conservative” Republicans like Everett Dirksen and Robert Taft, Jr., accusing their more liberally inclined party brethren, like Thomas Dewey, and Nelson Rockefeller of being “me too Republicans” for their support of various New Deal-related programs.
The only significant “social” issue at the time of that 1964 Convention was civil rights legislation, which had been supported by a higher percentage of Congressional Republicans than Democrats. Perlstein, again accurately, targets Barry Goldwater for leading the charge against portions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but, in tying Goldwater’s conservatism to some latent racism, he is dead wrong in two ways, which have significant consequences for today’s political discourse. First on a personal level, Goldwater had supported Eisenhower in civil rights legislation during the 1950s, and had lead the fight to integrate Arizona’s National Guard – years before Truman took the same step federally. Second on an ideological level, Perlstein fails to recognize the number of “conservative” Republicans, like Taft, Dirksen, and others who helped push through the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act the following year.
It is when commentators like Perlstein trot out the “moderate/conservative” labels with their corresponding historical representatives (Dewey/Rockefeller/Goldwater), and try to replicate them into a completely different policy context, they fail miserably. Put simply, there is no “going back to the future.” In decrying the current state of partisan rhetoric, Perlstein gratuitously opined that back, “in 1960, there was a strange creature called the liberal Republican.” But what defined a “liberal” Republican back in 1960 is hardly what defines one today.
In his recent Los Angeles Times’ op-ed, “Resurrecting the Moderate Republican,” radio commentator, Marc Haefele, describes Dewey’s narrow loss to Truman as being much less ideologically based than today’s political races since, “moderation was the national consensus then.” Haefele pines for the return of figures like Dewey and Eisenhower to displace “the increasingly ideological GOP [that] waged a Talibanish war against Democratic representatives.” To reduce the growing levels of partisan strife, Haefele recommends, “all the [GOP] needs to do is reverse this direction; to acknowledge the intelligence and integrity of its moderate antecedents.” But, again, the policy context that defined “moderate” in these “antecedents” – without the current range of federalized social issues – cannot be seen as setting precedent for today.
While there are certainly differences of opinion within today’s Republican Party regarding fiscal and foreign policy, those who hearken back to the “moderate” Republicans of yore, do so out of disdain for the role social conservatives have assumed in the Grand Old Party (and in politics, generally.) The question at the heart of this discussion is: have politics become more polarized, or have issues (particularly the social/moral ones) become more polarizing? By detaching political labels from their historical contexts, pundits buttress their own support for such policies as gay marriage and abortion. They prop up dead Republicans, attempting to marginalize live ones. Would “moderate” Republicans like Dewey and Eisenhower support gay marriage? I find that hard to believe. No polling data on the subject exists from the 1950s, but that is only because almost no one considered it a possibility. The same could be said – though to a lesser degree – for federalized abortion laws.
While the world may have “flattened,” it has become more complex for policymakers. Recent attempts to extend the linear image of left, center, and right, as though these and similar labels have clear, ahistorical meanings, only hurt the cause of serious political discussion that transcends petty partisanship. Support for socially conservative issues is certainly not held by “extremist” elements within the Republican (or Democratic) Parties, and discounting them by channeling the likes of Dewey and Rockefeller won’t make it so.