How did all this get started?(Part 3)

God, Gays, Guns and Jezebel Fonda

As opposition to the Viet Nam war, the draft and the increasingly successful civil rights movement began gaining traction in the late Sixties, Middle America moved in the opposite direction. Richard Nixon called them the “Silent Majority” and claimed them as his own in his narrow defeat of Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Now we call their part of the country the “flyover states.” But back then all the rioting and marching on either coast pissed them off. Jane Fonda was widely regarded as a Jezebel, an enemy of America. And "liberal" started to become a dirty word.

Lyndon Johnson is said to have remarked after signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that “the Democratic Party had lost the South for a generation.” He turned out to be right. And just like clockwork, Richard Nixon launched his “Southern Strategy” during the 1968 election campaign which pandered to white Southerners and offered them a receptive ear. They bought in and have been Republicans ever since.

So briefly, the Democratic Party sacrificed its entire southern wing to support civil rights for Blacks which took the Democrats from a comfortable majority party to being on a rough parity with the Republicans. That is why I grind my teeth about people like Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice and J.C. Watts.

Now welcome Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich who founded the Moral Majority in 1979, a major milestone in the fundamentalist Christian journey from pure religion to full engagement in politics. The Religious Right that we have today emerged in opposition to the various “liberation movements” of the Sixties and the Seventies. My own cynical view is that a huge block of those roots go back to white southerners’ rage against the success of the civil rights movement. Fundamentalist- evangelical Christianity is deeply embedded in southern culture and segregationists often used the Bible to condemn racial integration.

However, Roe v Wade in 1972, as well as the emergence and sporadic acceptance of Gay rights plus the cultural fall out from the “Sexual Revolution” further energized fundamentalists and evangelical Christians to organize and struggle against those forces. Abortion especially fueled the politicization and the coalescence of the Religious Right. Not only did they condemn it as “baby killing” but they reviled its emergence from “forbidden” sexual liaisons which in origin and result strike at the very heart and soul of the uncompromising patriarchal social system from which Christianity springs.

Finally, the always aggressive and ever-aggrieved National Rifle Association brought its own brand of uber-fanaticism to an ever-fanaticizing Republican Party. In 1991 Wayne LaPierre took over control of the NRA and proceeded to bring it to new heights of hyperventilation. Laugh all you want but the NRA had not only some of the most extensive mailing lists around, but on the other end of those lists were a hair-trigger membership who would fire off pungent telegrams and make outraged calls to senators and congressmen when word came down from LaPierre. They were potent political warriors right out of the box.

Add all these folks up and you’ve got quite a party. And if they can only forget about all the things that they don’t like about each other and really learn to hate those God-denying liberals, then they got the whole enchilada.

Well guess what? The very man that could pull that off rode into town on a white horse and wearing a white hat. That man could only be Ronald Reagan. With a nod of the head, the promise of a smile and a hearty “there you go again,” he devastated an already devastated Jimmy Carter and rode the resulting electoral landslide right to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Him’n Nancy.

I guess what brought in the “Reagan Democrats” and the southern good ole boys and the western “straight-shooters” was that after all that female liberation and gay rights and nigras jumping off'n the plantation, n’shit...that it was again all right to be a real gol durned MAN for Christ-sakes. All that PC crap about not pinchin’ dollies' fannies and not beatin’ up a fag or two was reeeeversed. It’s not that Ron ever actually said anything about it, but you just knew that he would if he could. He gave a tacit seal of approval to being a gol durned MAN again and not being ashamed of it. And that brought them into the heart of the Grand Old (man’s) Party.

Reagan also pandered to the Religious Right. When called upon to do so, he could give one of those Academy Award performances that he never got an opportunity to give during his actual movie career and bring tears to Pat Robertson’s and Jerry Falwell’s and Gary Bauer’s eyes and condemn, well, whatever they were condemning that day, abortion, gays, secular humanists, who knows? Reagan’s bravura performances for the Religious Right had them baying in tongues, which is very scary.

However, it built the base and the base was everything. It could take the conservative movement into the 21st Century and perhaps return the USA to fabled pre-Roosevelt times when corporations were triumphant and when the business of America was business.

Next post: Bringing it all together