The Missing Middle in American Politics
How Moderate Republicans Became Extinct
Article Summary and Author Biography
Moderate Republicans have gone virtually extinct because they never formed a real movement with a coherent program. Their absence has left American politics more polarized and less pragmatic. Two new books describe the rise of the Republican right -- and what it means for the country's future.
REIHAN SALAM is a Policy Adviser at e21, an economic policy think tank. He writes a column for The Daily and a blog for National Review Online, and he is a co-author, with Ross Douthat, of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.
Oxford University Press, USA
2012
504 pp.
0199768404
$29.95
Oxford University Press, USA
2012
264 pp.
0199832633
$24.95
Essay
What does rise of the Tea Party movement mean for U.S. foreign policy? Since today's populists have little interest in creating a liberal world order, U.S. policymakers will have to find some way to satisfy their angry domestic constituencies while also working effectively in the international arena.
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An interview with the author of "The Missing Middle in American Politics," an article in the new issue of Foreign Affairs.
Michigan Governor George Romney and his son Mitt, New York, May 1964. (Associated Press)
After Lyndon Johnson’s victory over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. presidential election, the once-mighty Republican Party was reduced to a regional rump. The Democrats won overwhelming majorities in the House and the Senate, which they used to pass Johnson’s Great Society legislation. Republicans, meanwhile, were at one another’s throats, having endured the most divisive campaign in modern political history. Goldwater had managed to win the Republican presidential nomination over the impassioned opposition of moderate and progressive Republicans, who at the time may well have constituted a majority of the party’s members. Moderates blamed Goldwater’s right-wing views for the defection of millions of Republican voters.
To rebuild the party, a number of moderate Republican governors banded together to form the Republican Governors Association, designed to serve as a counterweight to the Republican National Committee, which had been captured by Goldwater conservatives. Shortly after the election, the association issued a statement, sponsored by Michigan Governor George Romney and other leading moderates, calling for a more inclusive GOP and criticizing Goldwater’s campaign. Stung by the failure of many moderates to actively support or even formally endorse his candidacy, Goldwater retorted that he needed no lessons in maintaining unity, having urged party members in 1960 to look past philosophical differences and pull together to support Richard Nixon’s presidential candidacy. Goldwater wrote a letter to Romney dripping with contempt: “Now let’s get to 1964 and ask ourselves who it was in the Party who said, in effect, if I can’t have it my way I’m not going to play? One of those men happens to be you.”
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