Nixon and Reagan turned the south Republican by knocking civil rights and black culture. Reagan coalesced a Republican majority with a heady mix of revitalized anti-communism and nostalgia for pre-civil rights era attitudes. But if his success was helped by racist supporters, and Reagan occasionally succumbed to racist views, his was a hopeful candidacy with a positive leitmotif, not a paranoid one.
After decades fraught with civil rights and race war fears, communist subversives and nuclear war fears, Reagan got elected by asking people whether they were better off than they used to be. Clinton distilled this to "its the economy, stupid." Ethnicity, foreign events, and culture conflict mattered, but majorities voted for economic prosperity, as they saw it. But the secret traitor fear was not dead, just dormant.
America's two dominant parties, left and right, incorporate contradictory interest groups. The left includes a manufacturing class that wants to stop foreign competition to American business; anti-corporate types who hate US corporations the way right-wingers hate the US government; intellectuals who fear the rabble; people in the rabble's rubble who want better; moms concerned with local education; college students concerned with foreign wars; etc.
The right includes extractive industries who want government benefits, not laws; rural communities who depend on government laws to fill their prisons; quiet employees with few hopes; internationalists with empire dreams; soldiers who want order and respect; libertarians who refuse to respect order; evangelicals who want to change society; traditionalists who like things as they used to be; etc.
Reagan and Clinton used economic conditions to pull together various factions. Both benefited from extraordinary demographic and technological transitions that combined to increase productivity and wealth. Anti-black sentiment still bubbled up importantly, whether as welfare reform, opposition to Haitian intervention, or when Reagan objected to authorizing the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. It was just below the surface, held there by good economic times.
But the fear of secret traitors, rooted in slaveholder psychology, reemerged when economic expectations faltered and Obama was elected. The capitalist transition now concerns China, not technology, and demography no longer propels American demand. Obama was the only candidate who ran on hope, but his future goals are linked to opportunities, not profits. The right-wing has no Reagan, not because similar people don't exist, but because Reagan-era conditions no longer exist.
So the party's internal factions threaten to splinter. In response, politicians can use fear to cut across contradictory interest groups and mobilize linked political action. Thus the slaveholder paranoia once again appears: no one wants exposure as a secret traitor, even if the charge is false. The far right rediscovered the Goldwater playbook, replaced communist with Islamic terrorist, kept the theme of equating liberals and socialists, and went on the attack.
The return of paranoia is not just because of economic trouble. The far right's greatest concern is that demography will trump ideology. America's future will be progressively less white, and new interests will dominate public debate and elections. Today's power-centers will shift, a dangerous threat to conservatives. Barrack Obama's election signals this future.
The far right looks to interpersonal paranoia as a potent tactic to shore up public support of policies that actually serve an owner-class minority. A black president is so visibly different, old-school paranoia comes naturally to many traditionalists. Unlike slaveholders, who pretended in public that slaves were no threat, though feeling strongly otherwise, today's right-wingers go public with their fears. Still, if the less reactionary public gets the message, they might pretend otherwise but vote paranoia. Thus the tea-party wants to make latent slave-owners of us all.
To see centrist legislators cowed by right-wing attacks helps us understand how most southern whites opposed succession, but failed to voice it. The centrist health care reform bundles legislation American majorities support, but centrist Democrats don't want to mention it, because they expect far-right assaults that challenge their loyalty to historical ideals. In 1840, slaveholders backed their verbal threats with tar and feathers; today's right-wing deploys attack ads that are almost as demeaning.
I'll end hopeful: if slaveholders win battles, they lose wars. Fear is self-destructive and undermines alliances. Short term political success fueled by paranoia results in policies that can poorly fit a political party's majority. Struck dumb by fear, few challenge their extremist peers, so political success comes without political consent. A kind of temporary dictatorship results, with unchecked policy that lacks internal debate.
Not only do such poorly checked policies risk failure, they lack intrinsic political support among the party's interest groups. Fear maintains order, but undermines development. Failed policies, rejected by poorly consulted supporters, divides a party. The story of today's far-right resurgence will not end with the mid-term elections; from a historical perspective, their success may even doom Republicans in years to come.
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