The RepublicansA Republican senior statesman recounts how the Republican Party was hijacked by the radical right.
By Bill Kraushttp://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/25/26/cover_story.html<snip>
Before Watergate and the "reforms" it spawned, the party was run by the moderate middle. Its power came from a large, experienced volunteer organization and a well-heeled and persuasive finance committee. This party endorsed candidates and funded and mobilized voters for these candidates' campaigns. Running without that endorsement and what it brought with it was almost always so fruitless that few even attempted it.
Then along came Watergate. The post-Watergate reforms were intended to deal with the excesses that the Nixon-dominated Republican Party's henchmen used to raise excessive (and, as it turned out, wholly unnecessary) amounts of money to assure the Nixon re-election over George McGovern. The reforms created a Political Action Committee (PAC)-driven campaign financing system. The law of unintended consequences came into play, as it usually does, and cut the candidates loose from party domination. Post-reform candidates could slate themselves and fund themselves, which they happily did. The PACs bought their way into this system because it gave them and their money more direct access to candidates without the party and the party leaders acting as a moderating, declawing intermediary. Ody Fish, a former Republican state chair, once described the party funding system as "a kinder mistress," which it was.
When the parties lost their power to slate and fund, they also lost many of the moderates who went to all the trouble of becoming delegates, going to caucuses, building organizations and raising money because this was the route to political power and influence. With a new power structure in place, some of the party regulars went on to directly help candidates' campaigns, but a lot of them simply went home. And the long, slow slide into factionalism began.
The factions had always been a part of the party system and structure. The single-issue zealots could be counted on to show up at the party convention's Resolutions Committee meetings to urge the larger organization to come down for the flat tax, to oppose women's choice, to discourage any regulation of guns, to advance their narrow, often bizarre causes. The moderate party leadership had marginalized these efforts and the noisy minority of delegates who espoused them. They knew that the general interest was not an accumulation of special interests, but something entirely different. They also knew that marginalization was electorally safe because their single-issue nemeses had (politically anyway) nowhere else to go.
<snip>
Bill Kraus is an interesting politician with a lot of history in the Republican Party in Wisconsin. He is an old-school Republican and certainly moderate. He thought the Clinton impeachment was bogus and reeked of partisanship. He has appeared regularly on WPR's morning talk shows discussing Wisconsin and national politics. He's one of the few Republicans I have a great deal of respect for. I thought this editorial showed an interesting perspective.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
