Why The Right Went Wrong--Conservation From Goldwater to Trump and Beyond,

by E.J. Dunne Jr., Simon and Schuster, N.Y., 2016.

This is a short summary of the author’s take on conservation history in the United States. --his review of the politics of the Reagan, Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan years: I was surprised to read that, “Urged by Democrat Moynihan, Nixon pushed for the Family Assistance Plan…minimum guaranteed income for poor families.” Though skilled at arguing for a “conservative position,” he called “essential…all aspects of Social Security. At the same time he made cuts that “hit programs for low-income Americans.” A master of contradictions, he “could live with a good deal of cognitive dissonance between his public statements and his practice.”

Sound familiar.?

Bush was noted for raising the income rate from 28% to31%, whereas Reagan “established tax-cutting as a central…tenet of…Conservative dogma. Then came Clinton, calling Republicans the party of the rich and special interests. The author notes that “Republicans moved right” while Democrats took more of the center. “The white South…became solidly Republican.” In 1990 50% of white southerners had voted for Democratic House candidates. In 1994 “50% of white Southerners had voted for Democratic House candidates ; in 1994, only 36 percents did.” In 2010 that number was “down to 27%.” In Congress rules were changed to require “a three-fifths majority to pass a tax increase.” At the same time tax and welfare cuts were made.

President Clinton noted that “the new congress…was well to the right of the American people,” and would propose cuts in education, health care, and the environment in order to pay for tax cuts and defenses increases. Voters preferred the opposite . The problem continued to be that politicians mistake “…their own opinions for the views of the vast majority…” In the late nineties radio and television grew rapidly and widened the gap between the right and rest of the country.

We are still paying an ever-growing price for that gap. Immigration and differences in marriage issues increased as talk radio got into the fray. Suburbanites, swing voters, were 41% Democratic in 2002 and 51% in 2006. Conservation took a “hard right turn” in the Bush years. Then George W. Bush gave the banks a 700 billion bank bailout in 2008, enraging “free-market purists” Was this a slippery slope to corporate socialism? Such Big-government spending was seen by the left as a barrier to health coverage, poverty and inequality. In the Obama years the Tea Party was still struggling with stagnant wages.

Americans are still divided, as money enters the divide. The wealthy fear the country is moving toward “socialist oppression.” However, “Opposition to big government did not extend to …medicare and social Security. Meanwhile, abortion, religion, Hilary Clinton, and immigration joined the fray. Thinking was more “winner take all” than patriotism. Thinking on all topics grew mindlessly absolute hard edges.

This book suggests that we are better than that. As we face the dire challenge of the Covid virus, we should ease back and find well-thought out solutions for the future. We don’t need to let our voices distort the debate. We can ask honest questions, like why are American conservatives the only ones in any of the wealthy democracies to oppose a universal guarantee for access to health insurance?