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Is Th;E New Right Flipping Its Whig?

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Is Th;E New Right Flipping Its Whig? ~o/ THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT June 1975-Vol. Ill, No. 6 ...... 217 Edited by MICHAEL HARRINGTON Is th;e New Right flipping its Whig? by JIM CHAPIN tion, after years of work and the Great Depression A large proportion (probably a majority) of the and with an electoral system that favored minor par- leaders of the American Right have concluded that ties. Put in that light, Wallace's 13 percent of the the Republican Party, like its Whig predecessor, is vote in 1968 is very impressive. Also impressive, al- doomed. though completely unnoticed, was John Schmitz's mil- Indeed, the "Whig analogy," put forward most di- lion votes plus as the 1972 nominee of the American rectly in recent books by Kevin Phillips (author of Party. These votes, solicited in what Phillips calls a The Emerging Republican Majority) and William "credibility and media vacuum,'' were collected de- Rusher (publisher of the National Review) has be- spite the presence of an opponent who used the same come a cliche in conservative circles. But the serious- sort of "lesser-evil" rhetoric that destroyed left par- ness and strength of the Right's determination to ties in the 1930's. Polls now predict that Wallace will bring down the Republicans has been and is persis- collect 20 percent of the vote next year; that would tently underestimated by liberals, by the media and (Continued on -page 2) by most politicians. Yet the mass strength of the Right over the last dozen years is the most startling new fact in American politics. Black and white together: Walter Dean Burnham, probably the most sophisti- cated expert on political realignment in the United strategies for a movement States, repeatedly points out the significance of the Wallace phenomenon. In all our Presidential elections, by MICHAEL HARRINGTON only seven minor parties which were not merely split- There was a nostalgic feeling in marching behind offs from major parties have ever secured 5 percent or the DSOC banner at the May 17th demonstration more of the vote. They were: the Anti-Masonic Party called by the NAACP in Boston. It had been a long in 1832; the Free Boilers in 1848; the Greenback Party time since many of us had been part of an inter-racial in 1878; the Populists in 1892; the Socialists in 1912; throng singing "We Shall Overcome." I remembered the (LaFollette) Progressive in 1924; and the (Wal- the streets of Montgomery at the end of the Selma lace) American Independent Party in 1968. Given the trek in 1965, or that silent, tragic day in Memphis in institutional and ideological barriers to third party 1968 when we came to pay our last respects to Martin voting, Burnham argues, every such protest has im- Luther King, Jr., who had been slain in that city while supporting the sanitationmen's strike. But the issue which brought us to Boston was any- thing but nostalgic. We were there because of the Your move? bitter battle over busing in South Boston. This was, As usual, the Newsletter will cease publishing for the sum- in short, a movement of the '70's facing new problems, mer. Our next issue will be in September. above all, how to fight for racial justice in a time of To make sure you get it on time, send us your new ad- deep depression. dress if you've moved or are planning to move. The cause of black Boston is, as those who read Jack Plunkett's article in the March NEWSLETTER know, utterly righteous. That one time capital of pact beyond the number of votes it collects, and each American abolitionism has not simply tolerated the of these protest movements has helped to reshape our de facto segregation which arises out of housing pat- major party system. terns; its school board has, during the 21 years since Burnham points out that the German Nazis, ap- the Supreme Court opinion against "separate but pealing to the same sort of radical middle constitu- equal," increased the segregation in the city's educa- ency (S. M. Lipset's term for downwardly mobile or tional system. We were not, alas, marching in solidar- threatened middle class voters) as Wallace, scored 18 ity with some bold and imaginative new plan for qual- percent of the German vote in its breakthrough elec- (Continued on page 4) New Right... (Continued from page 1) Conservatives organize ca11cus make him the all time leader for splinter party Presi- The right wing Governor of New Hampshire dential candidates and make his party the first splinter and the man who spearheaded Nixon's effort to party to collect more than one million votes in three dismantle the Office of Economic Opportunity are successive elections. The polls conducted by Pat Cad- working together to organize a Conservative Cau- dell, McGovern's '72 pollster, show that while only 18 cus nationally. percent of the public considered voting for Wallace in Only one of the efforts among right wing acti- 1972, 35 percent would consider voting for him now. vists this year, the Caucus is stressing grass-roots The number who consider Wallace unacceptable has organization and catch-all conservatism. It is ac- fallen from 62 percent of the population to 47 percent. tively headed up by Howard Phillips (no relation In tandem with the change in mass opinion (or per- to Kevin), a founder of Young Americans for haps causing it) there has been a greater acceptance Freedom and the special Nixon appointee who of Wallace among mainstream politicians who are re- ran afoul of the courts in his efforts to do away sponding to the size of his constituency. Despite such with anti-poverty programs. Meldrim Thomson, well-publicized events as Ted Kennedy's visit to Ala- the conservative Governor of New Hampshire, bama, the most striking shift has been among the has agreed to chair the caucus. leaders of the Republican Right. They have come to In a recent letter to a large national mailing realize that more than two-thirds of those Americans list, Thomson appealed to those upset about the who call themselves conservatives are not in the Re- whole range of social issues (busing, prayer in publican Party. Conservative politicians increasingly the schools, crime, sexual permissiveness) and see their Republican connections with establishment solicited membership and contributions for the liberals like Percy and J avits as an impediment to Caucus. He also outlined an ambitious program reaching the conservative masses. to organize the Caucus where conservatives are Like us, the New Right believes in realignment. An strong, not in Washington, but "back in the advertisement in the National Review gives us an idea home town." Among other things, the Caucus of the rhetoric of Right Realignment: it will pit a hopes to call together a national convention next coalition of "producers" against a "new and powerful year, and "if neither major political party intends coalition of hon-producers comprised of a liberal ver- to offer a Presidential ticket committed to free- balist elite and a semi-permanent welfare constitu- ing America from the control of the socialists, ency, all co-existing happily in a state of mutually the delegates may decide to propose and endorse sustaining symbiosis." The center of the enemy coali- their own candidates." tion, according to Phillips and Rusher, is the liberal -J.H. media and related institutions in the "educational- industrial complex." According to Phillips, the history of the United States has been a series of struggles be- support in the South and his strongest opposition in the twePn ever-changing Northeastern elites and the rest Northeast, Massachusetts has now become the "Left" of the country. In the past, he argues, the elites have state and Mississippi the strongest Nixon bastion. been conservative and the masses have wanted change. To Phillips, Gerald Ford resembled Millard Fill- But now, with an elite centered in the knowledge more, the last Whig President. Just as the old Whigs industry, the elite depends on the creation and con- found their greatest support in the border states that sumption of novelty, and the masses want stability. would be divided by a new alignment, so Ford, the So, mass movements of protest, once found on the representative of the Midwest, comes from a section Left, rise now from the Right. And while FDR, like that would be cut apart by a new sectional alignment other "Left" Presidents before him, found his greatest (pitting Northeastern liberals against Southern and Western conservatives). Like the old Whig President, Ford is left straddling the cleavage, unable to respond 11.w;4kiwt o{ to the needs of the country by any dramatic action lest he split his party without any forseeable gain. THE DEMOCRATIC LE-FT A third party of the Right poses a real threat for Michael Harrington, Editor 1976. If Reagan and the Republican Right can team Jack Clark, Managing Editor up with Wallace, combining the former's access to People who helped put this issue out: money and respectability with the latter's mass base, David Densman, Gretchen Donart, Carol Drisko, Mar- the new conservative party could, according to the jorie Gellermann, Jimmy Higgins, Selma Lenihan, two national polls, collect 23-25 percent of the vote. Donna McFarlane, Hubert Rodney, Cynthia Ward. The party would draw evenly from all classes within Signed articles express the views of the author. the country and from self-identified Democrats, Re- Published ten times a year (monthly except July publicans and IndeoendPnts. Southerners, rural resi- and August) by the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, 31 Union Square West, Room 1112, New dents and those with a high school education (as op- York, N.Y.
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