Randall Stephens,听Reader in History and Programme Leader in American Studies聽at Northumbria University, comments on the Republican Party for The Conversation.
The latest聽聽had it all: denunciations of President Obama, angry rants about America鈥檚 future, and all manner of bile. It seems like a new low 鈥� but in reality, Republican candidates have been singing this tune for years.
In the fall of 1962, Richard Nixon lost a bitter, divisive campaign against the incumbent Governor of California, Pat Brown. Furious and stunned, he was not in the best shape to hold a press conference. His press secretary wanted him to be magnanimous and statesmanlike, but Nixon could hardly control his anger and contempt.
Stuttering with resentment, he drenched the 100 reporters on hand at the聽聽with sarcasm: 鈥淔or 16 years, ever since the Hiss case, you鈥檝e had a lot of fun, uh, a lot of fun. You, you, you, you鈥檝e had an opportunity to, to uh, attack me, and I think I鈥檝e given as good as I鈥檝e taken.鈥�
Then, he delivered his parting shot, with a nervous smile that was as much a grimace: 鈥淏ut as I leave, uh, I want you to know, just think how much you鈥檙e going to be missing. You don鈥檛 have Nixon to kick around any more.鈥�
merely picked up where he left off. Presidential candidates Barry Goldwater in 1964, George Wallace in 1968, and Ronald Reagan in 1980 implored and sometimes convinced voters to doubt or reject the wisdom of elites.
With the 2016 presidential primary campaign now at full throttle, the legacy of that angry populist wisdom seems more powerful than ever.
Under fire
Today, communists are no longer hiding under every rock or bed, but Republicans, masters of the paranoid style, have plenty of targets to fit the pattern:聽,听,,听,听,听, or聽.
White politicians and activists are driving a great deal of the political conversation, to the joy of voters who feel beset by forces out of their control. The language of embattlement runs through these circles like a raging river.
Conservative Christian candidates such as聽,听,听, and now聽聽pander to the base with apocalyptic denunciations of political correctness and screeds about the dangers that whites and Christians face.
Some of this bile is relatively new, oozing out of the 鈥溾€� or Obama-is-a secret-Muslim swamp that first started fermenting in 2008. But as the historian聽聽nearly a decade ago: 鈥淐onservative culture was shaped in another era, one in which conservatives felt marginal and beleaguered. It enunciated a heady sense of defiance.鈥�
And today, this defensive, distrustful mindest is in full flower.
The A-Team fights back
The Grand Old Party hosted its latest banquet of disenchantment at the聽, on September 16. Nearly 53 years after Nixon鈥檚 snippy remark about getting kicked and abused, the spirit of embattlement is still strong. The liberal media still can鈥檛 be trusted.
鈥淒onald Trump鈥檚 being in this race,鈥� quipped聽, the junior US Senator from Texas, 鈥渉as forced the mainstream media finally to talk about illegal immigration.鈥�
Then, between barbs aimed at the gallant, anti-immigrant frontrunner, who celebrates mammon and聽聽with equal zeal, the candidates at the Reagan Library were eager to convince Americans that an overbearing government and a traitorous president had ruined their country and abused them. The kicking must stop.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a聽, was ready and able to stand up for the downtrodden. Huckabee has a special skill for demagoguery and martyrdom, and has recently made a rabbit鈥檚 foot out of聽, a Kentucky clerk who refused to do her job and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
鈥淚 know that there are some in the Wall-Street-to-Washington axis of power who speak of all of us contemptuously,鈥� he assured the hungry audience. 鈥淏ut I鈥檓 here to say that I think we are, in fact, the A-Team.鈥�
That would be true only if the plot of the schlocky 1980s TV show involved renegades roaming the country, nurturing grudges, and speaking untruths to the already powerful.
From the debate stage, former Florida governor聽聽tried to stake out some kind of middle ground, with an eye on his viability for the general election in November 2016. In doing so, he strayed far from the Tea Party hymn sheet of poisonous outrage, waxing romantic about sunny Reaganism.
鈥淎re we going to take the Reagan approach, the hopeful optimistic approach, the approach that says that, you come to our country legally, you pursue your dreams with a vengeance, you create opportunities for all of us? Or the Donald Trump approach?鈥� The latter was the 鈥渁pproach that says that everything is bad, that everything is coming to an end.鈥�
Surely the answer the Republican base prefers at this moment is option B.
Angry alchemy
The base is animated not by optimism or hope, but by bitterness and longstanding grudges. Blinded by rage at the left and centre, its stalwarts will believe almost anything that fits their sense of embattlement 鈥� no matter the reliability of its source. The physicist Karl Giberson and I聽聽about the preference for renegade experts and anointed leaders with dubious or no credentials.
The modern right鈥檚 ideological alchemy has already turned Kim Davis into a latter-day聽, the founding fathers into born-again evangelicals, climate science into a hoax, and Reagan鈥檚 outlandish and discredited 鈥溾€� into the only way America can get back on track.
On the latter point, incidentally, the right鈥檚 partisans might pay heed to how slash-and-burn tax cuts have worked out in my home state of聽. As of April, the Republican governor Sam Brownback鈥檚 land of Oz聽聽to close the deficit.
Since July, pundits have been variously marvelling and panicking at the surprising rise and continued rise of Donald Trump 鈥� but really, it makes perfect sense. The party that cultivated the politics of outrage and bolstered stubborn anti-intellectualism is racing to the bottom of a bottomless pit.
The frontrunner (for now) is a Frankentrump of the GOP鈥檚 own creation. He is the embodiment of decades of anger, antipathy, and anti-establishment hostility.
This article was originally published on聽The Conversation. Read the聽.
