In 1976, still dealing with the fallout from Watergate, Republicans and conservatives from around the country and across the ideological spectrum used the presidential nominating process as a proxy for debating the future of the GOP: would it continue with the mainline “law and order” Republicanism represented previously by Nixon, and then by incumbent President Ford, or would it steer itself farther to the right, towards figures such as Ronald Reagan, former two-term governor of California?
Ford won the party’s nomination. David Keene, then just having finished working on Reagan’s failed campaign, speculated in this article on the future of the conservative movement within—and outside of—the Republican Party.
Today, Mr. Keene is President of the National Rifle Association. The HPR interviewed him in April 2013.
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Before engaging in a bit of speculation on the future of the Republican Party, I must begin with a warning. Nothing I write here should be taken too seriously because the political atmosphere in this country has been so volatile in recent years that anyone who speculates on what might happen next year or even next month does so at his own risk. This extends to one’s personal involvement in politics. In business a man can make career plans that, with a reasonable bit of luck, will allow him to say where he will be and what he might be doing in, say, four or five years. In politics, unless he’s from rural Georgia and has a dream, he probably ought to forget the long range planning and get to work.
Take my own case. Seven years ago I had just lost an election myself and was looking for a nice, quiet midwestern law practice in which I could lose myself and perhaps make some sort of living. Since then I have worked for a Vice-President who had to resign his office, associated with men who have been hauled off to prison, spent two years on Capitol Hill and worked for a year in the South trying to unseat an incumbent President from within his own party. During this period every man I have worked for ran or intended to run for the Presidency this year. None of them even made it as far as their own party’s nomination and all but one have been forced to permanently abandon their quest.
Who could have predicted in 1970 that Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew would resign their offices in disgrace or that Ronald Reagan would be in a position to seriously challenge an incumbent Gerald Ford this year? Or who could have predicted after Watergate and the electoral debacle of 1974 that the Republican Party led by Mr. Ford and with a base of less than 20% of the vote had any chance of hanging on to the Presidency this fall?
So much depends on the outcome of the November election that it is difficult to make anything more than the most tentative projections. Still, tentative projections and scenarios prove useful.
It is generally assumed this summer that Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford were fighting not for the Presidency, but for the “honor” of losing to Jimmy Carter. Mr. Carter, after all, was leading both men by at least thirty points in the polls, had managed to unite his party for the first time in years and was coming into the campaign with the overwhelming support of his own region.
But as I write this Mr. Carter’s lead has been trimmed to less than eight points nationally and he appears to be barely breaking even in a number of traditionally Democratic states in the midwest and northeast. Moreover, he seems to be losing support even in the south and it is now possible though certainly not likely that he will lose to Gerald Ford by the time this is published. Even if he does manage to half his slide, it is clear that he isn’t going to bring dozens of Democrats into office on his “coat-tails.” This means that the Republican Party isn’t going to just vanish as some might have predicted a year or even six months ago. In fact, Republican Congressional and Senate candidates in some parts of the country are running stronger races than expected and if Mr. Ford wins we may actually hear talk about his coat-tails.
This must be viewed as rather disquieting to those within the American conservative movement who would prefer to abandon the GOP in favor of a new rightist party, because a close race will guarantee that most conservatives will continue to view the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they should channel their political energies. Third Party sentiment will continue among some activists, but their dreams will have to be postponed unless Mr. Ford loses and the GOP suffers severe and unexpected losses on an across-the-board basis or a triumphant Gerald Ford blunders seriously after the election.
To understand the hopes and frustrations of many conservatives one must appreciate that there is a general belief among conservatives that the American people have been moving to the right in recent years and that as a result neither party presently reflects their stands on the issues in any consistent way. Further, many of those who have been active in the Republican Party have concluded that the GOP is a liability rather than an assert to conservatives seeking to influence the course of public policy.
Political parties in this country are coalitions of people or groups of people with similar or at least overlapping interest. However, the nature of the system dictates a two party system over time and forces each party to reach out for the support of enough people to win an election and too many to remain ideologically pure. Moreover, in a two party system, the parties are also forced toward the center and thereby toward each other. If either party moves too far away from the center-as the GOP may have in 1974 and the Democratic Party did eight years later-the other will move over far enough to grab those votes drifting about in the middle.
Third parties as well as fourth or fifth parties are always around, but usually do little except influence one of the two prominent parties. If they hit a nerve and begin to draw significant voter support one of the major parties will ordinarily move over far enough or incorporate enough of their issues to grab that support for itself. It is only when new issues develop and the existing parties prove too inflexible to take advantage of them, that new or minor parties have an opportunity to supplant them.
The question today is whether the GOP will accommodate itself to the realities of an electorate in flux or whether it will throw that opportunity to the advocates of a new conservative party.
After the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Kevin Phillips and other conservatives began talking about an emerging Republican majority that might dominate the electoral politics of the next thirty years. Phillips himself proclaimed shortly after the new administration took office that “A new era has begun” and predicted that “the upcoming cycle of American politics is likely to match a dominant Republican Party based in the Heartland, South, and California against a minority Democratic Party based in the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest.”
Phillips believed that those voters who supported George Wallace that year were in the process of transferring their allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party. He saw George Wallace and his American Independent Party as a sort of halfway house where those Democrats who weren’t quite prepared to vote Republican might rest for a moment on their way over.
The key to the Wallace voter was supposedly the “social issue” which was at the time seen to include “law and order,” civil rights and the reaction to the redistributionist policies of the Great Society. The conservative or Republican strategy would be to appeal to the Wallace constituency on these issues and thereby bring them into an expanding GOP.
The strategy sounded good and seemed to be working until the fall of 1970 when old economic issues and a sensible Democratic counter-attack blunted its effectiveness in that year’s Congressional elections and convinced Nixon that it would take more than “law and order” to change the face of American politics.
In preparing for 1972, therefore, Nixon seemed at first to abandon the themes of 1969 and 1970 and, in the process, managed to infuriate a significant number of conservative activists and intellectuals. Indeed, he appeared for a while to be embracing big government and preparing to spend as much of the people’s money as necessary to guarantee his re-election.
It is interesting to note that during this period conservative disagreement with Mr. Nixon and his policies took the form of an abortive challenge to his leadership within the GOP. Representative John M. Ashbrook carried the conservative banner into New Hampshire and Florida in the hope that he might draw enough votes to demonstrate to Nixon that the right wing of the party could not be taken for granted.
He and his backers hoped also to influence the direction of the second administration by forcing Mr. Nixon to retain Vice President Agnew (who was at the time in danger of being dumped in favor of John Connally) and to abandon the Family Assistance Plan, a major welfare reform program he had advanced during his first term. Rhetorically, they charged Mr. Nixon was abandoned the 1968 GOP platform and that Mr. Ashbrook was running precisely because of his loyalty to that platform and the Republican Party.
The conservative candidacy didn’t have much effect on Nixon, but then the Democrats nominated George McGovern, the emerging Republican Majority was transformed into the “New Majority” and Richard Nixon managed to roll up one of the most impressive electoral totals in modern times. Conservatives were still not very happy with Richard Nixon, but he had managed to put together an electoral coalition that they believed would in due course fall to them. Moreover, Spiro Agnew was primed and ready to go in 1976 and the Republican Party looked healthy. There were a few, of course, who liked to point out to anyone inclined to listen that in spite of Richard Nixon’s overwhelming victory the Party had made very few real gains in Congress or in the states. They believed or at least suspected that the Party might not be nearly as healthy as most of us believed.
Then Watergate, and the Agnew resignation, drove the emerging majority back into the woodwork and all of a sudden the Republican Party was in real trouble. Phillips’ “new era” appeared to have ended almost as quickly as it had begun. Polls indicated that marginally fewer people considered themselves conservatives in 1973 than had a few years ago (though on issues the swing to the right was continuing, even accelerating) and hardly anyone wanted to be called a Republican. It was about this time, even before Nixon resigned his office, that serious third or new party talk began to be heard in Washington.
The collapse of the Nixon Administration brought us Gerald R. Ford, a nice fellow but not one likely to inspire great confidence. On Capitol Hill, Ford had always been prone to take orders or to compromise when faced with any two alternatives.
Though suspected that he might stumble, most Washington conservatives wished him well. He was, after all, going to help “put Watergate behind us”, and we had to face the fact that he was now the President and, coincidentally, the leader of our party.
The initial signs looked good to those interested in the survival of the Republican Party and bad for those who wished it would disappear as soon as possible. The new President was amazingly popular and for a time it was assumed that all would go well. It didn’t work out that way. The Nixon pardon, the collapse of Vietnam while the President was out playing golf and the WIN program pushed conservatives beyond the limit of their endurance.
Kevin Phillips was irate at the way things were going and concluded that the Republicans, wedded to Watergate and big business, could never appeal to the old Wallaceites. He began thinking seriously about a third party and predicting the imminent collapse of the GOP. He was soon joined by others. Howard Phillips, the former head of OEO under Nixon, formed something called the Conservative Caucus and began planning for the day when a new party would emerge. Bill Rusher, the publisher of William F. Buckley’s National Review, joined and even went so far as to write a book entitled “The Making of the New Majority Party.”
A number of ordinarily more moderate conservatives even toyed with the idea of a third party at this time and several attempts were made to get Governor Ronald Reagan to consider running for President as a third party independent candidate. Reagan refused, but the idea must have had its attractions since polls taken at the time revealed that he might have a better chance running as an independent than as a Republican. Had Reagan decided in mid-1975 to challenge Gerald Ford outside the Republican Party the Party might have collapsed or at the very least a new party might have emerged with Reagan as its rallying point.
Analysts looking back on the period may conclude that by remaining loyal to the GOP, Reagan saved his party at least temporarily and thwarted the development of a major new party. Reagan’s ability to make that sort of choice should tell us something about the problems inherent in starting a viable new party.
The Wallace movement was as dependent on George Wallace for its existence as it was on the issues he articulated and a new conservative party would have to be able to field someone as articulate and respectable as Ronald Reagan to survive its infancy.
Conservatives are split from the GOP on other issues, but are generally reluctant to leave the party, Ronald Reagan could convince his fellow conservatives to abandon the party of their choice and their father, and bring a significant number of new majority Democrats into a new party, but no one else could.
So what happens now? Conservatives already dominate the Republican Party at the lower level and I think that most of them are convinced that their party can only survive as a party of the kind Phillips envisioned in the late sixties. The upper Midwest and the Northeast, while once areas of GOP strength, have become the secure base from which the national Democratic Party operates. And voters in the so-called sun-belt are moving toward the Republican column at all levels.
Moreover, they recognize that within these regions themselves the very nature of the Republican vote is changing. This is perhaps most stark in the states like New York where the old rural based and heavily protestant Republican core vote is being supplanted by a heavily ethnic and predominantly Catholic component. As a practical matter, this means that a candidate like Jim Buckley is far more likely to draw votes from Blue Collar workers in Italian neighborhoods in Queens and Nassau County than he is from the membership of the Westchester Country Club.
This continued movement was clearly evident in New York state in 1974 when a combination of Watergate, a lackluster GOP gubernatorial candidate, and a Democratic party united behind the Irish-Catholic candidacy of Hugh Carey failed to reverse the trend in traditionally Democratic parts of Queens and Brooklyn. Carey did well in these areas, but not nearly as well as might have been expected from his statewide vote.
This movement toward the GOP thus continued in New York and elsewhere through the early seventies in spite of electoral losses and press reports that one candidate or another seemed to be reconstructing the old Roosevelt coalition. The fact is that Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again, at least not by the people who dominate the Democratic Party. Many of the voters in Queens and elsewhere who were part of that coalition may become independents or continue to call themselves Democrats for a while, but they are unlikely to go back to the Democratic Party on a permanent basis.
This shift in voter support for the two major parties in New York and elsewhere is the result of a number of factors, but the two most important are the increasing willingness of people to vote on the basis of their issue preferences and the increasing public perception that clear issue differences exist between the two parties.
Thus, if fewer voters cast their ballots this year because of ideological sympathy for Mr. Carter or Mr. Ford, it will represent merely a temporary reversal of a trend that has been gaining momentum since at least 1960. I say that the reversal will prove temporary because it will result from the nature of the Carter candidacy on the one hand and the momentary focus on non-ideological issues such as trust, who rode where on whose airplane, etc.
For those seeking a meaningful realignment within the GOP, however, the atypical nature of this year’s contest could have serious consequences. This could prove especially true if Mr. Ford wins and misreads the reasons for his election. Those voters are available to the Republican Party, but the party’s leadership must reach some accommodation with them. If the GOP retains control of the White House on November 2nd, the party leadership must recognize that the future of the Party will for better or worse be inextricably intertwined with the future of Gerald R. Ford and his administration. And Mr. Ford will have to recognize this as well. Thus, conservatives who now call themselves Republicans as well as those who hesitate to associate with the party will watch Mr. Ford carefully to see if he has the vision necessary to bring the emerging conservative majority into his party.
If Carter wins narrowly enough to allow GOP candidates at lower levels to avoid total disaster it will leave enough people with an institutional stake in the party to guarantee its survival. The fight that then develops will in all likelihood take place within the GOP with conservatives emerging as the winners in most areas. Reagan supporters and other conservatives who dutifully lined up behind Mr. Ford after the Kansas City convention will return to the control of the party.
The Republican Party in this case would grow increasingly conservative in the years ahead but the expansion of its electoral base will depend as much on the competence of its leadership as on their ideological proclivities. It may also depend on the course Mr. Carter pursues as President
The trend toward partisan realignment on which Kevin Phillips and others based their optimism seven years ago is continuing. The Democratic Party cannot do much to reverse that trend: perhaps it is more accurate to say that they will not do anything to reverse it.
As President Mr. Carter could ignore the pressures from the left wing of his party and try to attract wavering Democrats back into the fold. He could, in short, use the power of his office to change the Democratic Party’s appeal and base of support. He is unlikely to do this, but if he does he could gut the Republican Party, occupy the center/right of the political spectrum and return his party to true majority status.
As for President Ford, few question his essential conservatism, but many still wonder whether he has either the strength or the foresight necessary to translate his instincts into action. Still more suspect that he may lack the political talent necessary to lead a party on the verge of extinction to majority status.
His election will do little to dispel those doubts though it will represent the single greatest electoral turnaround in recent American history. His election will not dispel the doubts about him because if he is elected it will not be because he won as much as because Jimmy Carter lost.
Indeed, Gerald Ford’s greatest asset in this campaign is his blandness. He seems in some respects to be almost a neutral quantity in a campaign that has evolved into a referendum on the social and political acceptability of Jimmy Carter.
Fortunately for Mr. Ford, Mr. Carter has given plenty of people numerous reasons to vote against him and, consequently, for Mr. Ford. Even if that is enough to give the election to Gerald Ford it will not be enough to secure a happy future for his party. It will help, however, and it is possible that many of those who have grown uncomfortable in the Democratic Party will finally come home just because the Republicans still hold the White House.
This too will depend on Gerald Ford. Unfortunately, he comes from a region dominated by old guard moderate Republicans and owes his nomination to those moderates and liberals who rallied to his banner lest their party fall into the hands of the Reaganites. These two factors could prove extremely important as background to the sort of thinking Mr. Ford will do after the election.
If he wins he will probably carry Michigan and New York as well as Pennsylvania and Illinois. He may carry Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Jersey and lose most of the South and parts of the sun-belt. This will be comforting to Mr. Ford and to those of his advisors whose attitudes are rooted in the forties and fifties for he will have superficially put together the sort of coalition that Tom Dewey and Republicans of his era were striving to construct.
He must realize, however, that in today’s world this sort of coalition is not a Republican coalition and certainly not a conservative coalition. It is at best an anti-Carter coalition called into being more by the mistakes and origins of the Democratic nominee than by the appeal of the GOP or Mr. Ford. If Mr. Ford fails to grasp this he could inadvertently set the stage for the break-up of the party he represents.
A misreading of the results of this fall’s returns could lead to a number of appointments and policy shifts that would play into the hands of the anti-Republican segment of the hard right. These people, among them National Review Publisher William Rusher, direct mail specialist Richard Viguerie and Conservative Caucus head Howard Phillips, would like nothing so much as an opportunity to destroy the GOP as an effective entity.
Those people were hoping for a confrontation in Kansas City this summer from which the party could never recover. Some of them supported the Reagan candidacy, but they were all convinced that his decision to challenge Mr. Ford within the GOP would only delay the building of an effective conservative coalition by keeping conservatives in the party.
These were the people pushing Senator Jesse Helms and others in Kansas City to start a fight on the convention floor that neither Ford nor Reagan could control. They left Kansas City in frustration not because Ronald Reagan lost the Republican nomination but because he refused to destroy the party when he saw that he couldn’t win.
These people today are waiting, hoping on the one hand that Jimmy Carter will win in November and planning for the day when they will lead the American right to the electoral victories they know are possible. The most important struggle that will take place in 1977 and 1978 will be between those people who want to leave the GOP and those who want to take it over. The winners of that struggle will do much to shape the political landscape for the next decade and may elect a President in 1980.
If Mr. Ford wins, and misinterprets his victory he could alienate the conservatives by either abandoning the dictates of the platform on which he won or sharing power with moderate liberal Republicans while shutting out conservatives. Thus he might himself precipitate the split one would expect a victory this fall to avert.
If he recognizes the importance of the continuing ideological shift in this country and senses the opportunities that this shift presents, he could build the new majority party that third party advocates only dream about. In the process, he could save the GOP because it could and should become the party of choice for a conservative majority.
There are some conservatives who fear just such a development and the emergence of what Jeff Bell, a former Fellow at the Institute of Politics and conservative writer, calls conservatism without conservatives. They believe, with some justification, that objective circumstances may well force whoever holds power during the next few years to adopt many supposedly conservative positions. They point out that this is already happening at the state level where men like Governor Jerry Brown of California use vaguely left wing rhetoric to justify the kinds of programs that were pushed by his conservative predecessor.
It is more likely that Mr. Carter will align himself with the traditionally liberal leadership of his party and pursue policies that may or may not work, but which will rejuvenate the right wing as well as the GOP.