From Frum Forum: Charles Whalen: Congressman Of The Real Majority

The author of the book discussed below wrote about the Republican member of Congress who seemed to most embody the liberal/moderate Republican who became the target of the more conservative members of the coalition.

- Click here for the article.
- Click here for the Wikipedia on Charles Whalen.

Here's a taste of the article:

In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon and his conservative aide Patrick Buchanan believed they had discovered a winning Republican formula. A recent book, The Real Majority by Richard Scammon and Benjamin Wattenberg, had argued that the prototypical American voter was a forty-seven-year-old machinist’s wife from Dayton, Ohio. The authors believed that Democrats could sway this pivotal voter by emphasizing economic issues, but Nixon and Buchanan realized they could counterattack by playing up social issues on which Democrats were vulnerable, including welfare, busing, crime, student radicalism, and drug abuse. Nixon wrote that this new conservative strategy would be aimed “primarily at disaffected Democrats, and blue collar workers, and at working class ethnics. We should set out to capture the vote of the forty-seven-year old Dayton housewife.”

But who in fact was the politician who won the votes of that Dayton housewife? For most of the 1960s and ‘70s it was Congressman Charles W. Whalen, Jr., who was usually considered among the most liberal Republicans in the House. Whalen was perhaps the GOP’s most successful vote-getter, racking up margins of over 70% in most of his elections and running unopposed in 1974, despite running in a district with a two-to-one Democratic registration margin. He was counted among the best and most effective Congressmen in multiple surveys, and even his opponents respected his intelligence and integrity. His heterodox positions angered his local Republican organization, however, and raised the question of how much divergence from a conservative agenda the party ought to tolerate.

It was easy to make the case that the former businessman and economics professor was a liberal. As a member of the Ohio state legislature from 1954 to 1966, Whalen had been an outspoken supporter of civil rights and author of the state’s first fair housing law. From the time of his first Congressional victory in 1966, he became a thorn in the side of the GOP leadership, opposing the military draft and the Vietnam War that the party supported, and calling for a reordering of national priorities to address issues such as air and water pollution, education, urban decay, hunger and welfare. He opposed most new weapons systems, including the Nixon administration’s proposal for an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense. In 1971, he co-authored an amendment to the defense procurement bill that would have prohibited new funds being spent on military involvement in Indochina. The measure failed, but offered the first indication of significant House opposition to the Vietnam War. Whalen also made early and controversial calls to offer diplomatic recognition to Communist China and reestablish ties with Castro’s Cuba.

Whalen himself felt that his advocacy of civil rights, education, and the environment were well within the Republican progressive tradition. His social liberalism was also balanced by a deep and sincere fiscal conservatism. His early battles with the GOP leadership came because of his opposition to tariffs, and indeed he proposed a world free trade association that would have eliminated trade barriers entirely. His belief that government needed to address social problems set him apart from Ohio’s mainly rural conservatives, while his conviction that the cost of government services had to be kept low set him apart from liberals who didn’t really seem to believe that government services had to be paid for.

1972 Presidential Candidate McGovern Dies

The NYT has a look at his life. The word liberal is tossed around carelessly, this is what one really looks like.

What’s Left of the Left

An inquiry into the decline of a movement.

Will Obama's Compromise With Republicans Drive a Wedge in the Democratic Party?

Greg Sargeant thinks not:

. . . there may be a gap between what high profile liberal commentators -- the so-called "professional left" -- think of Obama, and what self-described rank-and-file liberals think of him. The impression of liberal wrath is also perhaps exaggerated by media organizations that seem eager to feed that storyline.

The question now, however, is whether GOP gains in Congress will induce the Obama team to undertake a strategy that risks genuine alienation of liberals. Obama advisers have reportedly concluded that the key to winning back independents in advance of 2012 is to demonstrate compromise with Republicans in order to recapture his post-partisan appeal.

Liberals Unhappy With Obama

Democrats are also dealing with disaffected ideologues within their ranks. Obama has been too centrist for their taste. (These two links require subscriptions -- check in the ACC library for them.)

Are Liberals Rational in their Criticism of Obama?

Ross Douthat contributes to the ongoing question about whether we expect too much from presidents in general, and whether liberals specifically are getting a bit too exasperated with Obama.

Sacrificing Freedom to Gain Greater Freedoms

Here's some commentary on the different conceptions liberals and conservatives have about freedom. This guy uses an example I've used in class for years:

If freedom involves having a decent set of alternatives available to us, then government action can enhance our freedom even if it involves restraints on conduct that would not otherwise violate anyone’s rights. Consider traffic laws. Those of us who drive are constantly subjected to government dictates telling us what we can and cannot do. We can only drive on one side of the street. We have to stop at red lights and stop signs even when no one else is around. If freedom means only that government should not tell us what to do, then the traffic laws are a massive intrusion on our liberty.

I suspect that most people don’t see things that way, though. They probably agree with Elizabeth Anderson, from whom I have taken this example:

To be sure, in a state of gridlock, one has the formal freedom to choose any movement in one's opportunity set -- which amounts to being able to rock forward and back a couple of inches from bumper to bumper, getting nowhere. Some freedom!

Normally, the point of driving is to get somewhere. The traffic laws enable us to get where we are going much more quickly and safely than we would if each of us had to decide for him- or herself which side of the street to drive on. The traffic laws do not tell us where to go. They leave the choice of destination, and for that matter the decision whether to drive at all, entirely up to us. They simply tell us which side of the road to drive on, that we should stop at various points, and so forth. By taking away our freedom to drive on the left, or to blast through busy intersections, they grant us much more freedom in the form of a greatly enhanced ability to get wherever we want to go quickly and safely.
Anyone who thinks that the traffic laws enhance our freedom should acknowledge that in some cases, including this one, government action can enhance our freedom, even if that action takes the form of restrictions on what we can and cannot do.

We Are All Activists Now

Barry Friedman and Jeffrey Rosen argue that both the left and right have grown accustomed to the use of an activist court to achieve their political aims.

Defining the Terms of Political Debates

E.J. Dionne thinks conservatives have been able to do so for several decades now and that its about time liberals stepped up.

The Country Isn't Angrier, Anger Has Switched Sides.

The anger conservatives feel today was matched by the anger liberals felt in 2006. Maybe each side is just upset to be out of power.

Liberal Wing of Democratic Party Pulls Party to the Left

From the Washington Post, word of a rupture within the Democratic Party. Liberals are as upset about Washington as as conservatives.

Democratic activists flooding money into a primary challenge against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) say the race isn't simply about defeating the incumbent. It is also about rebuking a Democratic-controlled Congress that they say isn't pursuing an aggressive, populist agenda.

After Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter announced Monday that he would challenge Lincoln, liberal donors from groups such as MoveOn.org poured more than $1 million into his campaign, an unusually high sum for the first two days of campaigning. Liberals blasted Lincoln with anti-Washington rhetoric that sounded more like the conservative tea party movement. The groups are particularly critical of her opposition to the public option, as it is known, in the health-care bill and her support in 2008 for a Wall Street bailout.

Internal Divisions within the Democrats

The Democrats have their own issues attempting to restrain activists. Democrats who want to aggressively push abortion rights and civil rights for gays and lesbians are growing impatient with centrists and party leaders concerned with the electoral implications of those positions for their party in 2010.

Liberal Interest Groups Rule

Another consequence of November's shift in power. Groups that had wandered the wasteland for the past 8 years -- or even since 1981 -- once again have access to power. And of course those that had enjoyed access have lost it:

Less than 48 hours after Mr. Obama released his budget outline last week, oil and gas executives closely aligned with Republicans telegraphed a major fight against several tax provisions proposed for their industry. And real estate executives made it clear they would resist new limits on deductions for interest paid on mortgages for higher-income households, an area of common cause with Republicans.

Liberal groups are developing a broad variety of groups which intend to counter the highly effective communication apparatus that conservatives have built up over the past three decades:

Spurred in part by former Clinton White House aides seeking a return to power, and inspired by the success of the activist group MoveOn, liberals formed organizations like Media Matters for America, which calls attention to what it considers conservative-slanted news coverage, and the Center for American Progress, a group founded by John D. Podesta, Mr. Clinton’s former chief of staff and Mr. Obama’s transition director, to promote liberal solutions to major problems. With support from the billionaire George Soros and the Hollywood producer Steve Bing, among other undisclosed donors, the group became a liberal government in exile, developing a full range of policy prescriptions.

More signs of the significant shift in politics we are witnessing. We will monitor the conservative response.

Liberalism, Progressivism, and What Words Mean

Michael Lind wonders if its OK to be liberal again instead of progressive.

And Still More About Republicans

More commentary on the Republican realignment that wasn't and the essential components of the Obama Coalition. At the moment it seems that white college educated professionals have realigned from the Republican to Democratic Party. By joining the ranks of the young, black, Latino and secular, they helped Obama win the most impressive victory by a Democrat since 1964's Johnson landslide.

The author tells us:

Perhaps the most revealing post-election data on that question came from within the defeated McCain campaign. In an interview with Roger Simon of Politico, the Republican candidate's speechwriter and friend, Mark Salter, disclosed that in the campaign's own internal polling data, 60 percent of Americans regarded Obama as "liberal." The campaign thought that would be enough to defeat him, which is why it hammered on the "left-wing" themes.

Baiting the liberals didn't work this year. Disgusted with the Republican right, voters wanted something different and weren't afraid to look leftward. That is what "realignment" means.

At one time, the mere mention of the word "liberal" was enough to tar a candidate and make him or her unelectable. No more. This may be due to generational effects. Younger voters aren't turned off by liberalism. The strategy still works in Texas though, and may well for some time.

Kill all the Liberals

Apparently that's one of the things that motivated Jim David Adkisson to fire a shotgun into a Tennessee church. This is one way to deal with the problem of factions (not Madison's but he's dead and gone).

According to the affidavit requesting to search Adkisson's home, the suspect told investigators liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country. Adkisson also blamed Democrats for the country's decline, according to the affidavit.

"He felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets," the affidavit said. "Because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement ... he would then target those that had voted them into office."

The church he fired into, the Unitarian-Universalist Church, tends to swing to the left, and had declared itself to be "gay friendly" in its advertisements. CNN states that this may be prosecuted as a hate crime, but news sources seem to suggest Adkisson was just angry guy.

Now questions will be raised about whether his behavior has somehow been fueled by overheated ideological rhetoric. If so, it might be interesting to speculate about how culpable sources of this rhetoric might be for these actions. We just covered the concept of fighting words in 2301 and toyed with where the line might be drawn between speech that merely conveys a belief and speech that sets action in motion.

In the short term I can see introspection about whether the low quality of political speech in this country is to blame and ought to be modified, but the unworkability of any solution, along with the sheer enjoyment and ease of spewing hate will likely win out in the end. This is human nature after all.

This post from belief.net points out that the format of the internet itself--anonymous, brief, superficial--lends itself to childish superficiality. Perhaps technology is to blame.

Nothing Changes?

The Mainstream media has been covering the latest (physical, not cyber) gathering of fans of the Daily Kos, a left-liberal blog that has helped pull the Democratic Party--for better or worst--further to the left than it was when Clinton was president.

E.J. Dionne calls Markos Moulitsas--aka Kos--the left's answer to Rush Limbaugh, whose mastery of talk radio has never been duplicated by liberals. Many are suggesting the internet, as a medium, tilts as much to the left as talk radio tilts to the right.

Like most opinion leaders on the edges of the liberal conservative spectrum, Kos focuses as much, if not more, rage on moderate Democrats willing to compromise with the president as he does on Republicans. The more powerful they become, or seem to become, the more they can persuade candidates to stake out positions to the left.

As an indication that they are succeeding, almost all the Democratic candidates spoke before the Yearly Kos, though none attended the annual meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC helped develop the centrist ideas that won Clinton the elections of 1992 and 1996, and Gore the popular vote in 2000. But nothing fails like success and the liberal wing, which began rearing its head with Howard Dean's 2004 candidacy (Dean was an ex-DLC'er by the way) now wants it all. Which may not be a good thing for Democrats if they want to win in 2008. There just aren't that many hard core liberals out there.

Commentators also seem to point out an irony of the yearly convention--which was aimed at the liberal blogosphere. Once you got to see them, they looked suspiciously white, male and middle aged, just like everyone else in politics.

It makes you wonder if, once the web becomes mainstream, we'll be back where we all started.