Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (83 page)

The 9/11 attacks
: “Presidential Approval Ratings—George W. Bush,” Gallup.

Americans endorsed the war
: David W. Moore, “Eight of 10 Americans Support Ground War in Afghanistan,” Gallup, November 1, 2001.

Representative Tom Davis
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “A New and Improved George W.,”
Washington Post
, October 12, 2001.

Eight days after
: “A New Presidency,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 19, 2001.

“We have no choice”
: Rush Limbaugh, “Clinton Didn’t Do Enough to Stop Terrorists,”
Wall Street Journal
, October 4, 2001.

“The Clinton curbs”
: E. J. Dionne Jr.,
Stand Up Fight Back
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 59.

“During the Clinton years”
: Charles Krauthammer, “The Real New World Order,”
Weekly Standard,
November 7, 2001.

“We now pay the wages”
: Charles Krauthammer, “Paying for Our Holiday from History,”
Houston Chronicle
, February 15, 2003.

Cheney warned Daschle
: Brian Montopoli, “Schlep to Judgment,”
Washington Monthly
, September 2003.

But even the families
: Dionne,
Stand Up Fight Back,
p. 60.

“Unless responsibility is”
: David Firestone, “2 Senators Say White House Is Thwarting 9/11 Inquiry,”
New York Times
, October 12, 2002.

Cheney denounced
: “Cheney Cautions Democrats Criticizing Bush,” Associated Press, May 17, 2002.

the partisan construction of national identity
: Melinda Lawson,
Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), p. 77. The Julian quotation appears on p. 65. The “partisan construction of national identity” is described in chapter 3, pp. 65–97. The story of Rove’s interest in Lawson’s book is told in Kurt M. Campbell and Michael E. O’Hanlon,
Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security
(New York: Basic Books, 2006), pp. 1–2.

Scowcroft took to
: Brent Scowcroft, “Don’t Attack Saddam,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 15, 2002.

While 56 percent
: “ABC News Nightline Poll: Iraq Update 8/29/02: Support for Military Action Against Iraq Declines,” ABC News, released September 3, 2002.

“concerned about a go-it-alone strategy”
: Dionne,
Stand Up Fight Back,
p. 69.

as would Senator John Kerry
: John Kerry, “We Still Have a Choice on Iraq,”
New York Times
, September 6, 2002.

“What I am opposed”
: Barack Obama, remarks denouncing the Iraq War, October 2, 2002.

“If I were running”
: George W. Bush, remarks by the president in meeting with Central African leaders, September 13, 2002.

The war resolution passed
: “Roll Call Vote in House on Iraq Resolution,”
New York Times
, October 10, 2002.

The Senate passed
: “Senate Roll Call: Iraq Resolution,”
Washington Post
, October 11, 2002.

“I thought maybe”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Wellstone Had Passion for Politics, People,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, October 29, 2002.

Bush campaigned on
: David E. Thigpen, “Indiana House: By Foot and by Humvee,”
Time
, September 30, 2002.

“I think people are very uneasy”
: Dionne,
Stand Up Fight Back,
p. 73.

Chocola won the race
: “The 2002 Elections: Midwest; Indiana,”
New York Times
, November 6, 2002.

Republican senators filibustered
: William M. Welch, “Daschle Condemns Bush on Iraq Debate,”
USA Today
, September 26, 2002.

The ad claimed
: Mark Z. Barabak, “The Democrats’ ‘Poster Boy,’ ”
Los Angeles Times
, July 18, 2004.

“I served my country”
: Bootie Cosgrove-Mather, “Who’s More Patriotic?,”
CBS Evening News,
October 31, 2002.

“A decorated and disabled”
: Dionne
, Stand Up Fight Back,
p. 63.

“They don’t believe there”
: Senator Zell Miller, remarks at the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2004.

Conservatives saw the
: Karl Rove, remarks to the New York Conservative Party, June 22, 2005.

The first Gallup poll
: “Presidential Approval Ratings—George W. Bush,” Gallup.

Every prediction the administration
:
Meet the Press,
“Transcript for September 14, 2003,” NBC News.

the reason most Americans
: Wolf Blitzer, “Searching for the ‘Smoking Gun,’ ” CNN, January 10, 2003.

His approval rating
: “Presidential Approval Ratings—George W. Bush,” Gallup.

the 2004 Democratic National Convention
: “Kerry Makes Gains on Issues, Bush Maintains Leadership Image Advantage,” Pew Research Center, August 12, 2004,
http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/221.pdf
.

Regnery, the conservative
: John E. O’Neill and Jerome E. Corsi,
Unfit for Command
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004).

“How do you ask”
: “Flashback: A Rare Broadcast of John Kerry’s 1971 Speech Against the Vietnam War Before the Senate,” Democracy Now!, July 30, 2004.

A lengthy
New York Times
: Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg, “Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad,”
New York Times
, August 20, 2004.

Los Angeles Times:
“These Charges are False,”
Los Angeles Times
, August 24, 2004.

He endorsed
: Elisabeth Bumiller, “Same Sex Marriage: The President; Bush Backs Ban in Constitution on Gay Marriage,”
New York Times
, February 25, 2004.

New Mexico and Iowa
: “U.S. Electoral College: Historical Election Results 2000–2008,” National Archives and Records Administration.

A single exit poll:
“National Election Pool Exit Poll 2004,” CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
.

Bush increased his share
: Ibid.

“They also control a majority”
: Fred Barnes, “Realignment, Now More than Ever,”
Weekly Standard
, November 22, 2004.

“I earned capital”
: Richard W. Stevenson, “Confident Bush Outlines Plan for Second Term,”
New York Times
, November 5, 2004.

The Bush program
: Stephen Moore, “Bold Deal for Social Security,” Cato Institute, May 12, 2000.

“I guess you could argue”
: Lori Montgomery, “Social Security Enters Elections,”
Washington Post
, October 25, 2006.

Bush lobbied hard
: Jonathan Weisman, “Immigration Bill Dies in Senate,”
Washington Post
, June 29, 2007.

The bill’s supporters, he explained
: Robert Pear and Carl Hulse, “Immigration Bill Fails to Survive Senate Vote,”
New York Times
, June 28, 2007.

The very religious president
: Gary Gerstle,
The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment,
ed. Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

The rejection of the 2007 immigration
: E. J. Dionne, “Is the Tea Party Out to Banish Bush-Style Conservatism?,”
Washington Post
, November 18, 2010.

“The Republican base”
: Sean Trende, “What Cantor’s Loss and Graham’s Win Mean,”
RealClearPolitics
, June 11, 2014.

Schiavo had suffered severe
: David Brown and Shailagh Murray, “Schiavo Autopsy Released,”
Washington Post
, June 16, 2005.

Suburbanites, the ultimate swing
: “Portrait of the Electorate: Table of Detailed Results,”
New York Times,
November 6, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/07/weekinreview/20101107-detailed-exitpolls.html
.

“One Nation Under God”
: Kevin Kruse sheds a powerful new light on the politics of religion in the Eisenhower years in his
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America
(New York: Basic Books, 2015).

Trende offered the familiar litany
: Trende, “What Cantor’s Loss and Graham’s Win Mean.”

By a margin of 57 percent
: “57% of Public Favors Wall Street Bailout,” Pew Research Center, September 23, 2008.

This more pointed and arguably
: Matthew Benjamin, “Americans Oppose Bailouts, Favor Obama to Handle Market Crisis,” Bloomberg, September 23, 2008.

Representative Jeb Hensarling
: “Hensarling ‘Unconvinced’ on Treasury Plan,” CBS News/
Politico
, September 19, 2008.

Representative John Culberson
: Chris Isidore, “Bailout Plan Rejected—Supporters Scramble,”
CNN Money
, September 29, 2008.

Four days later
: David Herszenhorn, “Bailout Plan Wins Approval; Democrats Vow Tighter Rules,”
New York Times
, October 3, 2008.

discretionary spending grew by only 2 percent
: Michael Gerson,
Heroic Conservatism
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 157. Gerson also argues that “the Golden Age of austerity under Reagan is a myth,” noting that “[d]uring the Reagan years, big government got bigger” (p. 159).

“No president, of any party”
: Michael Gerson, “Obama’s Mosque Duty,”
Washington Post
, August 16, 2010.

Joe Scarborough, the “Morning Joe”
: Ben Craw, “Joe Scarborough Takes on Newt Gingrich Mosque Comments: ‘It’s Deplorable, It’s Sick Politics,’ ”
Huffington Post,
August 18, 2010.

“In that Oval Office meeting”
: Gerson,
Heroic Conservatism
, p. 8.

“A retreat from idealism”
: Ibid., p. 10.

“From tax cuts to Medicare”
: Alan Cooperman and Jim VandeHei, “Ex-Aide Questions Bush Vow to Back Faith-Based Efforts,”
Washington Post
, February 15, 2005.

Kuo, who died of cancer in 2013
: David Kuo,
Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 289.

Noting that 9/11
: Steven M. Teles, “The Eternal Return of Compassionate Conservatism,”
National Affairs
, Fall 2009.

Citing Walter Dean Burnham
: Barnes, “Realignment, Now More than Ever.”

Bush produced a net 1.1 million jobs
: Job report figures are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited in this post from FactCheck.org:
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/08/reid-wrong-on-bushs-economic-record/
.

“Don’t get me wrong”
: Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan,
Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. 20–21, 24.

But his indictment involved
: Ibid., p. 150.

Jeb, rather bravely, courted
: Michael J. Mishak, “Jeb Bush’s ‘Lose the Primary to Win the General’ Could Just Mean ‘Lose the Primary,’ ”
National Journal
, June 15, 2015,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/jeb-bush-s-lose-the-primary-to-win-the-general-could-just-mean-lose-the-primary-20150615
.

“The Bushes have always underestimated”
: Ingraham quoted in Ed O’Keefe and Robert Costa, “How Jeb Bush’s Campaign Ran off Course Before It Even Began,”
Washington Post
, June 10, 2015.

He drew 26 percent
: McClatchy-Marist poll, March 9, 2015,
http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/misc/usapolls/us150301/2016/Complete%20March%202015%20McClatchy_Marist%20Poll_2016_Release%20and%20Tables.pdf
.

9. THE NEW, NEW, OLD RIGHT

“I’ll tell you the expression”
: Jeff Zeleny, “A Proud ‘Lobbyist’ and ‘Southerner’ Weighs ‘President,’ ”
New York Times
, March 21, 2011.

New York Times
reporter Kate Zernike: Kate Zernike,
Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America
(New York: Times Books, 2010).

A year later, the British academic
: Dominic Sandbrook,
Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right
(New York: Random House, 2011).

Alan Crawford, a conservative
: Alan Crawford,
Thunder on the Right
(New York: Pantheon, 1981), p. 5.

Groups facing such displacement
: Matt A. Barreto and Christopher S. Parker,
Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 4.

“true believers in the Tea Party”
: Ibid., p. 247.

What concerned them
: Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson,
The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 56.

Nonetheless, the two
: Ibid., p. 69.

“Grassroots activists”
: Ibid., p. 13.

It is no accident
: Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, “No Cost for Extremism,”
American Prospect,
Spring 2015, p. 74.

Radio talkers on the progressive side
: On the bias of owners toward the right-wing talkers, see Bill Press,
Toxic Talk: How the Radical Right Has Poisoned America’s Airwaves
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011) pp. 242–49. A good academic study of conservative talk is Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella,
Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

“highest non-sports cable program”
: Chris Ariens, “24 Million Watch GOP Debate on Fox News; Most-Watched Cable News Program Ever,” TV Newser wedbsite,
adweek.com
(August 7, 2015).