TIMOTHY NOAH DECEMBER 14, 2011
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A specter is haunting the GOP--the specter of Nelson Rockefeller.
It's a curious paradox. The Republican party is more captive to its wingnuts than at any time since 1964. Yet three of the party's four most important figures right now--Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell--began life as Rockefeller Republicans. (The fourth, House Speaker John Boehner, was always a wingnut.)
Nelson Rockefeller, you will recall, was vice-president under Gerald Ford and governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. But his significance in national politics was that he led the liberal wing of the Republican party throughout the 1960s. Sometime during the 1970s liberal Republicans became mostly extinct and the few Republicans who weren't conservative got rechristened "moderate" Republicans, a species that today is mostly extinct, too.
Romney is the son of George Romney, a liberal, Rockefeller-style Republican and Michigan governor who in 1968 posed a serious threat to Richard Nixon's quest for the Republican presidential nomination until Romney famously said that the reason he'd initially supported the war in Vietnam (by then he opposed it) was that he'd allowed American generals to "brainwash" him. The comment was foolish but innocuous to opponents of the war, but to the war's supporters it was a treasonous implicit comparison of the U.S. military to Chinese communists, who were alleged to have used hypnosis and "truth serum" (of the type that haunts Frank Sinatra's dreams in The Manchurian Candidate) to brainwash U.S. prisoners of war during the Korean conflict. (In fact, what the Chinese used was straight-up torture, which elicited many false confessions.) The rueful "brainwash" crack finished George Romney off. Mitt Romney, who was devoted to his father, spent his pre-presidential political life in Massachusetts, where he worked hard to establish his bona fides as a moderate.
Gingrich began his political career as a Rockefeller Republican, and even as he moved rightward he maintained enough moderate positions to draw suspicion from his fellow conservatives. McConnell also started out a moderate Republican in the Rockefeller mold, though in his case no ideological trace of that period in his life remains. There are no Rockefeller Republicans in captivity today, except maybe Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Maine's two Republican senators. (Even Rockefeller wasn't really a Rockefeller Republican by the time he got to the White House, because the political spectrum had already shifted rightward.)
What do we know about how onetime Rockefeller Republicans survive in the post-Reagan era? Mostly they die off. But the ones who don't fight dirty when they run for president, if George H.W. Bush is any guide. The 1988 general election was hands down the ugliest of my lifetime--Willie Horton, Pledge of Allegiance, etc.--and the reason was that Poppy Bush was desperate to shed his "wimp" image and demonstrate his conservative bona fides. The vicious edge to Gingrich's and McConnell's political maneuvering in Congress probably owe something to a similar need to dispel any worries conservatives might harbor about these politicians' toughness (though at least in Gingrich's case I think a lot of the nastiness was also innate). George W. Bush, the son and grandson of Rockefeller (or at least Rockefeller-ish) Republicans, who governed Texas mostly as a moderate, fought dirty in the 2000 primaries (though he kept it mostly clean for the general--until the Florida recount) and had a perpetual chip on his shoulder that was hard to square with his privileged background. If either Romney or Gingrich is the Republican nominee (and I feel pretty certain it will be Romney), I expect a campaign as dirty as the one Poppy fought in the 1988 general. Romney has the same I'll-do-anything desperation to please that Poppy had, and for Gingrich fighting dirty is a default setting.
How do self-hating, or ex-, Rockefeller Republicans govern? That's harder to know. Poppy Bush governed mostly as a moderate. His son (perhaps in Oedipal rebellion) governed mostly as a conservative. Moderates tend more than ideologues to be other-directed types who respond to external pressure. But in the Dubya era the external pressures that mattered were the ones from within the Republican party itself, probably because the GOP had been out of power. (Also, Dubya wasn't all that other-directed. If he were he wouldn't have been such a schmuck in his youth.) If Romney is elected, I think the dominant pressures will once again be from within the GOP, for the same reason--the GOP has been out of power. Also, the GOP is more angry and more conservative than it's been since 1964. If Gingrich is elected--and I must say, I have difficulty taking the idea seriously enough even to type those words--the pressure from within the GOP may be even greater, because in addition to everything else GOP leaders really can't stand Gingrich on a personal level. Neither Romney nor Gingrich strikes me as the type of guy to say, in his inaugural speech, that we must strive to be kinder and gentler--Romney because he'll still be trying to smother the Rocky within, Gingrich because he doesn't like being kind and gentle, and probably didn't even when Rocky was his hero. So there's little hope that being vestigially Rockefeller Republicans will moderate Romney's or Gingrich's behavior. Mostly it just pushes them rightward. I almost wish their roots were in the John Birch Society instead.
12 comments
When viewed as a ritual exorcism of sorts in order to eliminate any remaining spectres of Rockefeller, today's hurdle jumping, contortioning, and all out sprints to the right make even more sense. It still makes me sick to my stomach, as well as worried about the state of the union, but the demand for ideological purity from the disaffected dimwits with grudges lodged securely up their backsides becomes that much more clear.
- GSpinks
December 14, 2011 at 1:02pm
This is an excellent post, Timothy. However, maybe N. Rockefeller wan't totally a Rockefeller Republican, either. I was a young adult when Rocky began ratcheting up the drug war, replete with draconian sentences. And I also vividly recall the Attica fiasco. The left has a lot of backside grudges, too. Have you ever read the comment section that you post at?
- liberalref
December 14, 2011 at 1:32pm
Since the roots of the current Tea-Party Republicans ARE in the John Birch Society, it's quite concerning that two candidates with no roots or convictions of their own (other than getting elected) might get into the White House. Not to mention that the only economic policies the Tea-Party allows are Supply-Side anti-Keynesian anti-Tax propaganda, and you wind up with a situation virtually guaranteed to kick off a double-dip Depression. Whose edge we've been so carefully skating upon due to Republican intranisgence against anything more productive.
- AllanL5
December 14, 2011 at 1:37pm
Another preposterous remark, A. How do you pull so many of them off? The menace of communism disappeared a generation ago and the Baggers show no evidence of being seized up by fear of the red scare at this late date. Robert Welch is probably turning over in his grave. I think that you wish to tie the Baggers to the worst putative antecedent you can think of, hence the egregious JBS analogy. Be assured, you provide much unintentional entertainment out here. PS(sst): The Klan would be an even more discredited and evil antecedent that you could tie the Baggers to. Call them belated Klansmen, A.! I could have sworn that I saw a Bagger glide by our house the other day with a sheet over his head. Or maybe it was an epiphenomenon of one too many vodka sevens that I had had.
- liberalref
December 14, 2011 at 1:57pm
Yeah liberalref you might want to check out this article by Princeton Historian Sean Wilentz in the New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_wilentz It's called "Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party's Cold War Roots" and traces the influence the Birchers and their ilk had on Glenn Beck and other Tea Party affiliates.
- Pnaut
December 14, 2011 at 2:11pm
Small caveat for McConnell. The Rise of Republicanism in Kentucky occurred much slower than in the other southern states (assuming one considers Kentucky a southern state, it not being one of the eleven); indeed, Democrats still control the lower house and, with only two exception (1967-71 and 2003-07), have held the governorship for the past 60 years. I'm no expert on Kentucky, but I would think that Republican politicians in Kentucky have to be a little more circumspect in their discourse than those in other southern states who frequently use inflammatory rhetoric when referring to those Godless, America hating, pinko Democrats.
- rayward
December 14, 2011 at 2:18pm
The column's headline "Rocky's Ghost" totally wrong-footed me. I was prepared to learn how Gingrich's resurgence resembled the amazing comeback of the broken down boxing has-been portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in the movie "Rocky". I probably should have known better since the movie character had some integrity, the former Vice President not so much. But given Gingrich's marital history, perhaps the unusual way Nelson Rockefeller died should have tipped me off.
- JackR
December 14, 2011 at 2:23pm
I will check it out. Last year I got a very nice note from Professor Wilentz after I wrote him, commending him for a book that he had written.
- liberalref
December 14, 2011 at 2:25pm
I believe the evolution of Republican thought has to do with investing. Gingrich, in his contract with America, went to the business community and said, "If you give us money, we will bring you regulations that you will like." Karl Rove said to the wealthy, "If you give us money, we will bring you tax laws that you like, like repeal of the estate tax and lower taxes on dividends." Now Gingrich is saying, "If all the new wealthy people will give me money, I will bring you a repeal of the estate tax, drop your tax rate, and get rid of capital gains taxes." It is more lucrative to invest in congressional legislation than the stock market.
- Nusholtz
December 14, 2011 at 2:39pm
Amen.
- Sophia
December 15, 2011 at 1:28pm
In short, the game is rigged and we are totally doomed, by we I mean the not-so-wealthy-and-influential, who believe in stuff like fair play, the American Dream, so forth, ie, we're nuts.
- Sophia
December 15, 2011 at 1:28pm
rayward, Kentucky's state politicians might be somewhat circumspect, but their national senators are flaming wingnuts. A lot of people know what an incendiary A-hole McConnell is, but not too many are familiar with ex-Senator Jim Bunning's antics. I grew up in Michigan (Flint), and Jim Bunning was my favorite pitcher for the Detroit Tigers in the Fifties. I even traveled to Briggs Stadium in Detroit a few times with my dad to see him pitch. But when he became a congressman and then a senator from Kentucky, he gradually turned into a bitter banshee. In his last senatorial campaign he noted that his Democratic opponent had a limp wrist and a son who looked like Osama Bin Laden. He had such disdain for him that he refused to debate him in person--he would only debate via closed-circuit TV. And Bunning won the election easily! That tells you something about the voters in Kentucky. The Veterans Committee eventually voted Bunning into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he's only in the Hall of Defamers as a politician. No Rockefeller Republican, he--a nasty soul. His major accomplishment as a member of Congress was to help get steroids banned from baseball. But not everybody appreciates his efforts even there. Ryan Braun comes to mind.
- magboy47.
December 15, 2011 at 2:52pm