How Intellectuals and the Ideologies They Market Can Realign American Politics
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The Power of Ideas: How Intellectuals and the Ideologies They Market Can Realign American Politics Charlie Frindt Senior Thesis in Political Science April 22, 2019 Advisor: Stephen J. McGovern Acknowledgements Working on this thesis has been incredibly rewarding and insightful, even if the process itself has been long and arduous. Having the opportunity to work on a subject matter I am not only interested in but passionate about has made the many hours put into this project worthwhile. I would first like to thank my advisor, Steve McGovern, for all the help he has given me in writing this thesis. His guidance and encouragement as well as enthusiasm and interest in the subject I have chosen to explore has kept me motivated and focused over the course of the research and writing process. I would also like to thank Professor Zach Oberfield for introducing me to The Politics That Presidents Make by Stephen Skowronek which became the inspiration for this thesis even if it has diverged from the ideas presented in that book. Finally I would like to thank my friends at Haverford for their constant encouragement over the course of this process and my family for the love and support they have given me over the years. 2 Table of Contents I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4 II. Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 6 Ideological Shifts from the Bottom: Electorate-Driven Realignments ..................................................... 6 Ideological Shifts from the Top: Elite-Driven Realignments ................................................................. 10 Ideological Shifts from the Middle: Group-Driven Realignments.......................................................... 23 III. Research Design .................................................................................................................... 26 IV. Case Study: The Conservative Takeover of the GOP ........................................................... 33 Rise of Modern Conservatism: The 1950s .............................................................................................. 33 Strands of Conservatism ..................................................................................................................... 33 Growth of Conservatism ..................................................................................................................... 41 Bringing Together a Conservative Movement: Goldwater and the Early 1960s .................................... 54 The Fusion of Conservative Thinking ................................................................................................ 54 Turning Ideas into Action ................................................................................................................... 56 Consolidating Power and the Nixon Presidency: 1965-1974 ................................................................. 73 Ideological Maturation and the Disorder of Liberalism: Conservativism after Goldwater ................ 73 Conservative Gains and the Rise of Reagan ....................................................................................... 76 Nixon’s Return and the 1968 Election ................................................................................................ 79 The Nixon Presidency ......................................................................................................................... 83 Victory of the Right: Resentment and Action in a Decade of Change, 1974-1980 ................................ 86 The Rise of the New Right .................................................................................................................. 86 Neoconservatism and Conservative Intellectuals in the 1970s ........................................................... 91 Conservative Revolt: The Battle for the 1976 Republican Nomination ............................................. 94 The Mobilization of Evangelicals and the Christian Right ................................................................. 98 Economic Crisis, the Organization of Business, and New Classical Economics.............................. 102 The 1980 Election and the “Reagan Revolution” ............................................................................. 106 V. Analysis ............................................................................................................................... 113 VI. Future Case Study: Progressive Movement in the Democratic Party ................................. 121 VII. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 124 VIII. Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 125 3 I. Introduction One of the most vexing issues in debates about American political development (APD) has been explaining how changes in the political system and their resulting effects on matters of public policy and institutional arrangements have come about. Most of the debate in the field of APD focuses on the roles of institutions, ideas, or some combination of the two in explaining how political change comes about. Another theory that has been put forward but fallen out of favor in recent years is the idea of electoral realignments. These are electoral realignments in the sense of sudden, long-term shifts in voting behavior by the electorate that affect party attachments, what issues are considered to be relevant, and what policies are politically feasible to pursue. Several classical examples of such “realigning elections” include the elections of 1800, 1860, 1896, and 1932 all of which resulted in one party demonstrating durable strength in subsequent national elections and a movement in favor of a certain set of ideas and policies that would last for several decades afterward. Scholarly work has attempted to explain the nature of these electoral realignments, who or what is driving them, and how they manifest themselves in election results. However, less work has been done on the role that ideology plays in such realignments. What are the roles of the ideas put forward by intellectual elites in influencing politicians, activists, and the electorate at large? What brings about the environment for why certain ideas gain a following while others fall to the wayside? How does ideology interact with certain key groups in the political process and through their efforts end up changing the positions of America’s major political parties? These are the questions this thesis seeks to answer. They are relevant because we are in a time when ideas that were seemingly on the fringes have now become mainstream 4 opinions being put forward by various candidates for president. The implications of such a change could be extremely important for the direction this country takes for the decades to come. By looking to explain where such ideas came from and how they gain traction we will gain a greater understanding of the interaction between ideas, the groups they influence, and their eventual manifestation through election results. This thesis begins with a section providing a theoretical basis for the discussion of ideology and electoral realignments. The second is an overview of the model and methodology used to inform the research in this thesis. The third section is a case study applying the model to the rise of modern conservatism in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s and traces how the ideas of conservative intellectuals impacted activists, interest group elites, and voters tied to the Republican Party which eventually led to the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980. The fourth section fits this case study into the model presented in the third section as well as analyzes its implications for the literature discussed in the second section. The fifth section speculates on a future case study involving an emerging progressive movement within the Democratic Party from the mid-2000s to the present. The final section discusses the importance of the findings of this thesis as well as directions for future research. 5 II. Literature Review Ideological Shifts from the Bottom: Electorate-Driven Realignments The electorate-driven school of electoral realignment literature rests on the idea that the voters are the catalyst for shifts in party dominance driven by critical elections. Ideological shifts in the electorate will lead them to change voting behavior during critical elections after which party elites will shift their parties accordingly to adjust to this new reality. This school can be broken down into two subschools: one focusing on socioeconomic changes as the explanation for realignments of the electorate and another focusing on ideological shifts of the views of specific groups within the electorate in the context of group politics. Walter Dean Burnham is the pre-eminent scholar in this school of thought and elucidated an electorate-driven model for electoral realignments. To him critical realignments represent an important view of the changes in the American politics over the course of the nation’s history and as a way of understanding how these changes manifest themselves in the electoral realm. Burnham defines the main elements of such critical realignments as: very abrupt interruptions