Rise and Triumph of the California Right, 1945-66 by Kurt Schuparra

Author:Kurt Schuparra [Schuparra, Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781315292755
Google: XJ4YDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32206325
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

Triumph of the Right

The issues that proved to be obstacles to Pat Brown in his reelection drive did not reflect well on the state of liberalism in California or the rest of the nation. Though the backbreaking squeeze would not come until 1968, liberalism was caught in an ever-tightening vise by the summer of 1966, with the “New Left” on one side and a growing number of conservatives—especially on social matters—on the other. The “counterculture” would not fully emerge until the following year (with the “summer of love”), but the antiestablishment politics of young student activists and like-minded others coalesced around opposition to the escalating war in Vietnam. Generally supportive of that battle against communism and ardently against protesting students, conservatives vented their anger over President Johnson’s War on Poverty through polemics that could be summed up in good part by the buttons and bumper stickers that proclaimed: “Join the Great Society—Go on Welfare!” His legislative accomplishments as president notwithstanding, Johnson’s vision of a Great Society had withered in two short years due to a lack of nurture in a nation that was coming apart rather than together. Ironically, the resentful and divisive “us against them” rhetoric that had helped spur New Deal liberalism under Roosevelt—his “forgotten man” versus the callous “economic royalists”—would now be used by conservatives against “nonproducers” to undermine the kindred liberalism of the Great Society.

Leading this assault in California, Reagan pledged to “listen to the people, not lecture them.” He attacked the policies of both Johnson and Brown, but made sure he “was offering positive alternatives,” as outlined in the Creative Society.1 Still, his disarming amiability proved to be his greatest asset, as it usually concealed, at least partially, the grating negativity of conservative resentments over civil rights and the growth of government bureaucracies. Assiduously rehearsed yet seemingly natural, Reagan’s ability to at once charm and chastise enhanced his gravitational pull on Republican moderates who had supported Christopher. One week after the latter’s defeat, his leading financial backers pledged their support to Reagan at a public meeting for party unity attended by the hierarchy of the Friends of Ronald Reagan. Christopher backer Thomas Pike, who had served in the Eisenhower administration, stated that the actor’s philosophy “comes very close” to that of the former president.2 Clearly an overstatement, Pike’s assertion nonetheless portended that if Reagan lost to Brown, it would not be due to Republican factionalism. Deciding to beat up on Democrats instead of themselves, the Republican right in California—which now accounted for almost half the state’s party membership—and the Modern Republicans at long last declared a truce. As Henry Salvatori happily proclaimed, “[t]he GOP has finally come through in one piece.”3

The quest for party solidarity, however, was not entirely successful because Thomas Kuchel made clear he would not endorse Reagan. Openly backing Christopher in the primary election, Kuchel nonetheless agreed during that campaign to be a cochairman of a Republican “unity” dinner in Los Angeles on June 23, but declined to actually attend due to “official duties.

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