Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [112]
Like the Tea Parties, the New Right also sought to harness grassroots activism to challenge the Republican establishment and purge legislators that they deemed insufficiently conservative. For instance, in 1978 the New Right supported primary challenges to Clifford Case, a four-term Republican senator from New Jersey, and Edward Brooke, a two-term Republican senator from Massachusetts (and the only African American in the Senate at the time). Case lost in the primary. Brooke won, but both seats went to Democrats in the general election—two fewer Rockefeller Republicans in the Senate.cv7
In one of his most brazen undertakings, Viguerie also targeted Rep. John B. Anderson (R-IL), the number-three-ranking Republican in the House. Anderson had begun his political career as a religious conservative, and the National Association of Evangelicals named him “Outstanding Layman of the Year” in 1964.8 But when the GOP began implementing the Southern strategy, Anderson went in the other direction. His eloquent defense of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was credited with turning sentiment in favor of the bill. He also supported welfare, abortion rights, desegregation busing, and environmentalism.9 In 1976, Anderson voted against the measure to prohibit federal funds for educational programs “involving any aspect of the religion of secular humanism,” which infuriated religious conservatives.
In 1978, a fundamentalist minister challenged Anderson in the Republican primary, denouncing him for “allowing secular humanism to be taught in schools” and “talking like some god of the East.”10 Richard Viguerie supported the challenge with fundraising letters that called Anderson “part of the liberal establishment clique.”11 Anderson complained of a deliberate right-wing crusade against him, telling reporters:
I’m the test case for this whole effort to purge the Republican Party of any progressive element. Mine is an early primary, and if they can defeat the chairman of the House Republican Conference, they can put the fear of God into a lot of other Republicans.12
Much as today’s right-wing Tea Party has captured the attention and interest of the media, the political pundits of 1978 obsessed over the challenge from the New Right. One popular columnist, commenting on John Anderson’s opposition to the secular humanism measure, wrote:
Trust the zany right-wingers to work themselves into a perfect lather because Anderson voted against Washington issuing an unintelligible decree [concerning secular humanism] to local schools . . . The Republican “left” has been shrinking even faster than the party itself has been. Today, the GOP is a conservative party, with less diversity than exists within Britain’s Labour and Conservative parties, and more ideological uniformity than any major American party has had in this century. 13
The journalist who wrote these words back in 1978 was George Will, the conservative Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post. (Republican Party circa 1978 to George Will: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”)
Nonetheless, the Republican establishment stuck by Anderson. He won his primary and retained his seat. The acrimonious campaign soured him on Congress, however. 14 He resigned his seat in 1980 and ran for president. When Ronald Reagan trounced him in the Republican primary, Anderson ran as an independent, winning less than 7 percent of the vote. Thus were the liberals cast off into the political wilderness as conservatives began to take control of the GOP.
The Republican Revolution
When Rockefeller Republicans roamed the halls of the Capitol building, moderates dominated the leadership of the Republican Party. They maintained their power