I'm responding to this opinion piece from Peter Wehner entitled What Has Happened to My Party Haunts Me. There is no doubt that those Reagan Republicans still alive today are haunted by all that Trump stands for. Nevertheless, I found the essay unsatisfying, mainly for what it left out.
There was no mention of the Tea Party and the havoc it wrecked. A particular example I have in mind is Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who was noted for his foreign policy expertise, losing in the 2012 primary to a Tea Party candidate, which was followed by the general election where the Democratic candidate won. This was a form of destructive cannibalization (from the Republican viewpoint) that repeated many times.
There was also no mention of Newt Gingrich and the Contract for America, where in the previous decade that imposed constraints on the Clinton Presidency, and hence the fiscal policy mistakes that were made, evident in retrospect if not in prospect. During Clinton's second term the economy was in high growth mode mainly due to the dot.com bubble and the Federal budget ran a surplus the last two years, where deficits had been the norm beforehand and which returned soon after Bush II took office. Those surpluses could have been used to fund massive public investment projects. At the time, the economy had been changing from one that had centered on manufacturing to one focused on the provision of services. Working class people, especially men, took a hit economically as a consequence. Many didn't have the right skill set for the service economy. Further, they resented that the service work was for lower pay. Increasing the supply of blue collar jobs outside of manufacturing would have been a sensible accommodation, but it was not to be. And when Bush II did take office the budget surplus was squandered on a tax cut for the rich.
Then there were two big events of note, each of which created a major imprint on the present. The first of these was the war in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein. So much has been written about the immorality of that war that I don't need to expand upon it here. But much less has been written, to my knowledge, about those who served in the military then and their connection to MAGA now. One did read about a large number of suicides committed by veterans of that war. Evidently, they felt morally betrayed. What about those who didn't commit suicide? And what about their friends and relatives who had a more indirect connection to the war. Did they too feel that their country had betrayed them by creating false expectations about what would happen?
The other event is about the "rescue" put in place after the burst of the housing bubble and the start of the financial crisis that then ensued. The plan bailed out many of the big banks, which were then able to rebound. The financial system as a whole was saved. But individuals in underwater mortgages didn't fare as well. Many lost their homes. The reality is that many shouldn't have qualified for mortgages to begin with. The only collateral they had was in the market value of their homes increasing steadily. So they had their expectations raised and then brutally lowered. Yet there were funds appropriated to help them out, but those funds remained unspent. If the big guys could get bailed out, why couldn't they be bailed out as well? That didn't happen.
Let me identify two other factors that have clearly mattered. One is the Citizens United v. FEC decision by the Supreme Court, which happened in January 2010. It enabled a huge amount of "dark money" to enter the political arena. If the various Republican incarnations are cast in the language of innovation, this dark money can be conceived of as a kind of venture capital. Of course, the main goal of such funding was to produce tax cuts which would give substantial return on investment. The secondary goal was to create a structure that would generate enough voters who support it where the primary goal could then be achieved.
The other factor is about our media, particularly the environment in which voters get their information about the news. When Reagan was President, Cable TV had become the norm, but the innovation in news programming was CNN. Other channels that provided news programming: ABC, CBS, and NBC did so with evening shows on workdays (a half hour each of national and local news) and then Sunday morning programming for commentary. PBS offered yet one more alternative. There was no station favored by one party only. There was a lot of criticism from Conservatives about Liberal bias in the news. But voters were getting their information from the same sources, more or less. Near the end of Reagan's second term Rush Limbaugh's radio show began, and the politics of grievance started anew. That show developed a large audience, but at the time it did not have a television counterpart. It would be more than a decade later until Fox News came on the scene, as did MSNBC, though the latter was slow out of the gate. By the early to middle 2000s, much of the audience was getting their news and/or commentary from one of these networks, each of which featured stoking their audience, as that was a way to hold viewer interest. It meant that Republican and Democratic voters were getting different narratives about the news and as a result wouldn't see eye to eye on most matters of politics.
In case this isn't obvious, none of these developments encouraged moderation. One might ask, what can be done now to undo the most pernicious of these factors/events? Alternatively, one might ask what other innovations might get the country back to having a shared vision and then be on a more sensible path thereafter? If one compares the election now to the election of 2008, there is the similarity in that it feels as if we are in crisis - then because of the Great Recession, now because Trump might be reelected. Many want simply to get past the crisis and not consider other items that would complicate things. I fear, however, that without asking these questions now, they might never be asked at all. That would be very unfortunate.
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