By Spy Archivist Aula Minerva
with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling
As the demented Tangerine-Faced Felon unites the Republican Party around his platform of bigotry, corruption, and subversion, some lifelong Republican hacks once again raise the question of how this could have happened to their beloved Grand Old Party.
Long-time Republican apologist Peter Wehner has to his credit seen through the Trump Show for years. Here he describes his evolution from Republican goon to human being:
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| Gosh, what happened to the good old moderate GOP? |
I assumed that the claim that the Republican Party’s effort to win the South’s support in the late 1960s was part of a “southern strategy” relying on a coded racial appeal was unjust. Enforcing law and order is certainly a legitimate issue for politicians to run on, and a basic function of government.
Today I see the Republican Party through the clarifying prism of Donald Trump, who consistently appealed to the ugliest instincts and attitudes of the GOP base—in 2011, when he entered the political stage by promoting a racist conspiracy theory, and in 2016, when he won the GOP nomination. He’s done the same time and time again during his presidency—his attacks on the intelligence of black politicians, black journalists, and black athletes; his response to the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia; and his closing argument during the midterm elections, when he retweeted a racist ad that even Fox News would not run.
Others similarly eventually woke up and smelled the crazy. Joe Scarborough, now pocketing millions as a cable news gasbag, started out as a garden-variety Redneck Riviera impeachment hellhound. What happened, Joe?
Asked by Colbert why other Republicans have not been as critical of Trump as he has, Scarborough said he thinks their tacit support of the president is “inexplicable.” He argued that the party has “betrayed its core values” since long before Trump took office, pointing to December 2015 when then-candidate Trump first called for a “total and complete” ban on all Muslims entering the United States.
“I said on the air, it’s very simple, it’s black and white,” Scarborough continued. “I said I can never vote for anybody in my party that said they were going to ban people for the god they worshipped.” He said he found Trump’s words and actions “disturbing” throughout the entire campaign, from the time he claimed to not know anything about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan to when he said a judge from Indiana couldn’t be fair to him because he was of Mexican heritage.
And then there's Mr. Kellyanne Conway, a long-time Federalist Society court-packing stalwart. Not anymore:
I just think the party is gone. I mean, the party needs to basically be destroyed, frankly, it is destroying itself. And I don’t think there’s any way that it can be repaired and I think Trump is going to take them down....
But it’s like crack, I mean, they’ve addicted themselves to these lies. They live off of these lies, the conservative media profits off of these lies, the political consultants profit off of these lies. The congressmen basically make a living selling these lies to the American people for contributions and funding—they’re lining their pockets or providing for their necessities of life through their PACs and whatever. There’s no way out, because they basically locked in a certain number of people to these lies.
Pete, Joe, and George sound hurt, shocked, and surprised by what happened to their Republican Party that they supported so loyally and loudly for decades. But should they have been so surprised?
We looked into our archives to see if this Republican insanity is in fact a recent phenomenon.
Let's go back to 1964 and take a look from the pages of the Spy (including material it reprinted from the New York Times News Service).
We picked 1964 because that was the year the Republican Party turned its back on the moderation of the Eisenhower years and embraced white supremacy, among other bats**t crazy ideas.
Although by June 1964 it was clear that Goldwater and the crazies were going to win, the besieged moderates were still hoping for a miracle from their flag-bearer, Gov. William Scranton. According to James Reston,
In these last two weeks before its Presidential nominating convention, the Republican Party faces an issue that can be compared only to its past great struggles over slavery,.. Reconstruction... isolation and industrial reform....This general issue can be reduced to a number of specific questions that will face the Republican delegates in San Francisco in a few days:
Is the party that emancipated the Negroes now to be identified with the policy of leaving the Negro's battle for equal rights to the states, as Senator Goldwater proposes?
Is it in the interest of the Republican party,...to ally itself with those who oppose the Negro battle for equal civil rights...? Does the “respectable” Republican party...think Mr. Goldwater's civil-rights policy is either good morals or good politics?...
The policies of Mr.Goldwater...amount to a proposal that the Republican party should let him lead it in a counter-revolution against the trend of social-economic and foreign policies of the last generation....
But the Goldwater Revolution wasn't just white supremacy and protection of the rich and powerful. It contained the historical hatred of the America-First Republicans to multinational organizations, including those intended to deter Soviet expansionism in Europe, like NATO. Reporting from San Francisco, the Spy's ace Political Editor David Bloviator said:
Although the Goldwater right talks a frightening warmongering game against the Soviet Union and what it calls Red China, it opposes effective mechanisms of collective security like NATO, jeopardizing U.S. national security and the uneasy peace in Europe.
(For further information see E.H. Miller, A Conspiratorial Life (2021) at 140 & 281.)
If you've forgotten how the Republican “great struggle” turned out in San Francisco, let us remind you.
On the eve of the Convention, Republicans organized a last-gasp opposition to Goldwater, leaking to The New York Times:
How...could Governor Romney of Michigan, or Senators Scott of Pennsylvania and Keating of New York...campaign on a ticket with a man who had once proposed putting Social Security on a voluntary basis, had questioned the need for a civil rights bill, [and] had at least once suggested withdrawal from the United Nations....
Most politicians could scarcely believe that in...January...[Goldwater] had suggested an investigation to see whether the poor were to some extent to blame for their poverty. Far from weaseling, he later said the same thing in cruder terms. [Like welfare queen? – Ed.]
All of which became mainstream Republican positions.
No wonder that worried moderates were seeking to get away from the coming debacle by booking rooms at the Concord to see Milton Berle on July 6 or Sammy Davis, Jr. on July 12. Not to mention three golf courses and five superb orchestras.
And they were right to worry:
As Tom Wicker reported for The New York Times,
The Republican National Convention sounded a thunderous “no” last night to the proposition that it should condemn the John Birch Society. Then the delegates defeated a proposal to broaden the civil rights plank of the party platform [by expressing support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Goldwater opposed] ....
Spectators...and some delegates drowned out Governor Rockefeller with boos when he spoke strongly for a platform amendment that would have repudiated the right-wing Birch Society and other extremist groups....
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| Everything was fine before 2015, Republicans say |
Nothing could have better demonstrated the hopelessness of the effort more than the howling response to Governor Rockefeller's speech.
(Don't worry; ol' Nelson was shown the love when he massacred prisoners and guards at Attica seven years later).
The great Russell Baker summed it up:
It was Bastille Day at the Cow Palace, too, and...the Cactus Jacobins demonstrated how things stand for the ancien regime. The guillotine is ready.
By the end of the Convention it was clear to even the meanest intelligence that the Republicans had been captured by hard-right reactionary white supremacist hatemongers.
Which has been the case ever since.
So to answer the supposedly vexing question of what happened to the great Republican Party, all you have to do is read the news from 1964. The GOP wasn't lassoed and kidnapped by the Tangerine-Faced Felon. They chose each other.
And they deserve each other.
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