Don't blame Trump for today's GOP. Blame Reagan.
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” ― H.L. Mencken
The 'Never-Trump' Republicans wail that Trump has ripped up the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the patron saint and author of modern Republican conservativism. In their dreams, a perfect America will exist only when the GOP sheds the taint of the orange stain and embraces the towering vision of that unmatched man. But like everything from the right, it is a hose job. Trump did not trample Reagan’s legacy. He ushered in Reagan 2.0.
America rose out of the political battle between land-wealthy, Southern, slave-owning conservatives and an emerging Northern mercantile class. In 1980, Reagan, an Illinois-born Californian, took his second run at the presidency with a campaign-launching speech at the Neshoba County Fair, Mississippi. He embraced the Southern conservative legacy with an oration chock-a-block with dog-whistles and segregationist imagery. Here is a sample,
“I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people. I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment.”
"States’ rights" is a phrase freighted with the bigotry of racist, local control. And is a national rallying call to white supremacists incensed at the burial of Jim Crow, enforced school desegregation, and the rise of civil rights. The reverence for constitutional originalism is a cover for the conservative core belief that God created America as a white man’s paradise. And any legislation or court opinion to the contrary is unAmerican, definitely socialist, and probably a Marxist plot.
In what the South saw as a new War of Northern Aggression, Reagan picked the side of traditional white hate over the side of forward-looking diversity. In doing so, he advanced the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon.
Reagan allied with a newly aggressive, fundamentalist Christian power bloc, urged to arms purportedly by the Supreme Court’s recognition that abortion was a constitutional right. But in reality, it was State’s Rights they were fighting for.
Presaging the 2016 presidential election, expedient conservative Christians picked as their standard-bearer the first divorced man to be President over the sincerely religious Southern Baptist evangelical incumbent, Jimmy Carter.
But enabling fundamentalist religious zealotry was only one piece of Reagan’s dismal legacy. He swept into the White House with a call for regular Americans to distrust and despise the very government he headed. His cynicism was encapsulated in his memorable dismissal of thousands of hard-working government employees when he said,
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the Government and I’m here to help’.”
Reagan rejected the idea that government could be reformed, modernized, and streamlined in favor of making a witty and resonant — but ultimately nihilistic — ‘joke’. But that is conservative SOP. They love bumper-sticker politics where the base values insult more than achievement. And pithiness is preferred to policy.
Once ensconced in power, the avuncular old man (then the oldest person elected President) convinced working-class white Americans that tax cuts for the rich would pave their path to financial Eden. And what had been a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth became a money grab by the financial elite. Conservative propagandists told those on the lowest rungs of the financial ladder, "Do not worry. Yours will come trickling down any day now.” Forty-two years later, that day has still not arrived. And the era of the one-income family for most working-class Americans evaporated like the promises made by that soulless man.
Reagan may well have been dismayed by the overt coarseness of his sociopathic successor but there is little in Trump’s message that would have been contrary to Reagan’s tax-slashing, regulation-crushing, union-busting, obeisance to big business. In some ways, Trump was more true to Reagan’s philosophy than the man himself.
After his 1981 tax cuts threatened to explode the deficit — and indeed it tripled during his eight-year reign — Reagan tried a return to fiscal sanity by increasing taxes in every one of the remaining seven years of his presidency. Trump never raised taxes in his one term. He would not have in a second term. And will not if elected in 2024. Reagan also granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented workers and their families in 1986. This measure of compassionate (and practical) conservatism would have been anathema to that combed-over, xenophobic sadist.
But excepting those two heresies, Reagan remained committed to racism with an ill-disguised distaste for signing the bill enacting Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His law and enforcement approach to illegal drugs increased minority prison populations. His homophobia was plain in his refusal to address the AIDS epidemic.
His refusal to support equal pay legislation evidenced his misogyny. His disregard for the plight of the poor led to a campaign to cut welfare. And his 1976 Cadillac-driving, ‘Welfare Queen’ lie is emblematic of the conservative belief that minorities and the poor are shiftless cheats living large at the taxpayer's expense. All in all, a very contemporary record of stone-hearted Republican policies.
Reagan’s anti-regulatory crusade led to the savings and loan crisis, the despoilment of public lands, and the devastation of the environment. And the Iran/Contra affair showed his love of dubious and likely illegal foreign policy. These are actions that would not trouble today’s GOP.
We can blame Reagan’s elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcast TV for establishing the environment of bias that led to the rise of Fox News and the curse of Trump. Cable news has decayed into truth-challenged, partisan bickering — where well-coiffed liars now dismiss facts and nourish conspiracies. And where the only metric to measure success is ratings.
With the line between fact and fantasy blurring, a TV huckster, whose only role was to read the lines written for him, was presented as a tough and talented businessman. So successful was this deception that conservatives picked Trump out of the pack and with the magic of minority rule, shoe-horned the pyrite-plated poseur into the White House.
When Reagan was elected President in 1980, many were dismayed by this actor’s supposed unqualified rise to the top. But at least Ronnie had been Governor of California twice. In 2016, his spiritual successor was a TV celebrity with no success at running anything. But he was handed the keys to the kingdom — confirming that image is reality to the poorly educated.
With innate cunning, Reagan and Trump realized that if you tell people what they want to hear, they will think you are a genius. And so here we are today, in a hateful America molded by deplorable conservatives. Where wealth is morality. The American Dream is destroyed. And fear and loathing are the coin of the realm.