Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [113]
But the analyst failed to appreciate the power of persecution politics. Capitalizing on a backlash against jackbooted ATF thugs, “reverse racism,” and White House conspiracy theories, Republicans mobilized evangelical Christians in record numbers and made huge inroads in Southern states, capturing 68 percent of white voters in the 1994 midterm elections. They picked up fifty-four seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate, taking control of both houses for the first time since 1954. Analysts credited much of the GOP’s success to aggressive advertising by conservative interest groups like the Christian Coalition, led by the paranoid Pat Robertson, and the NRA, led by the paranoid Wayne LaPierre. 16
Another new paranoid conservative star also made his mark in 1994. Rush Limbaugh, who had by then attracted a radio audience of 20 million, exhorted his listeners to vote Republican in what he called Operation Restore Democracy.17 “Rush is as responsible for what happened here as much as anyone,” said Vin Weber, a former representative from Minnesota.18 And in a 2001 congressional tribute to Limbaugh, Tom DeLay raved, “He was the standard by which we ran . . . He played a huge part in what happened in 1994 and, thereby, played a huge part in all of the successes that we have been able to do over the last 7 years.”19
The Heritage Foundation honored Limbaugh’s achievements with a keynote speech at its orientation for the 1994 Republican freshman class.20 In the speech, Limbaugh encouraged the new congressmen (they were all men) to stay mean: “This is not the time to get moderate. This is not the time to start trying to be liked.” At the end, he quipped:
Please, whatever you do, leave some liberals alive. I think we should have at least, on every college campus, one communist professor and two liberal professors, so we never forget who these people are and what they stand for. We can always show our children what they were and what they are—living fossils, ladies and gentlem[e]n.21
“The Vito Corleone of the House”
But when the Republican revolution petered out a few years later, there were still quite a few liberals holed away in the nation’s ivory towers. In 1998, Newt Gingrich’s resignation amid Republican losses and a swath of ethics scandals led many to conclude that the party had gone too far to the extreme. “The emerging cliche seems to be that the Republicans, having lost an unexpected five seats in the House and a couple of statehouses they thought were forever in their camp, will forge a new political message that is pragmatic and much less ideological, a shift in emphasis that will endear the party to moderate voters,” wrote a Chicago Tribune political analyst. Some Republicans looked to emulate the “pragmatic” approach of Governor George W. Bush, who had developed a reputation for governing by consensus in Texas .22
We know how that turned out. Though Bush ran for president as a “unifier,” his governing approach was based on “carefully tending to the Republican Party’s conservative base” and “trying to vanquish political adversaries rather than split the difference with them.”23 Following