INTRODUCTION
*The 1964 Republican National Convention, held at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, featuring libertarian Barry Goldwater, prominently displayed a dysfunctional wing of the party, one that ever forbiddingly would command center stage over half a century later. On January 6, 2021, feeding off the “stolen election”conspiracy fabricated by outgoing President Donald Trump and his surrogates, a horde of crazed renegades would storm the nation’s Capitol in a brazen effort to invalidate the mandate rendered by the American electorate. Blinded by their unqualified devotion, millions of Americans have mistaken their allegiance to a tyrant for patriotism. The insurrection was but the culmination of decades in which Republicans have cultivated extremism.
CHAPTER 1
*The author traces the humble beginnings of the Republican Party, as it reached its apex during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, to its downward spiral as the party of corporate interests and self serving anti Catholic propaganda, during the 1928 race between Republican Herbert Hoover and Democrat Al Smith. Conservatives would seize the momentum during the postwar admininistration of Harry Truman, as Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy burst onto the national scene with his arsenal of Communist branded, “red scare” conspiracy theories.
CHAPTER 2
* As early as colonial times, evidenced by the Salem witch trials, Americans have shown an inclination to embrace conspiracy theories. Historically, self serving politicians have exploited paranoia for political gain; for example, stoking the rampant hysteria directed against the Free Masons during the first half of nineteenth century. With the endorsements of the antisemitic automobile mogul, Henry Ford, and the resurgent embodiment of bigotry, the KKK, Calvin Coolidge captured the 1924 presidential election in a landslide. Coincident with Hitler’s rise to power and the dawning of FDR’s presidency in1932, Father Charles Coughlan and celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh were zealously spewing anti-semitic vitriol.
CHAPTER 3
*In the 1952 presidential campaign, at the behest of his advisers, Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee and eventual winner, sacrificing principle and conscience to expedience and resignation, withdrew his prepared statements criticizing the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy. Eisenhower’s deference to McCarthy’s unfounded allegations, claiming communist infiltration into the higher echelons of government, would provide a semblance of legitimacy to the senator’s scandalous proceedings. McCarthyism, the false narrative of an impending communist dystopia, became a mainstay of the Republican agenda. Albeit, Joseph McCarthy made a major contribution to an enduring legacy, the ongoing American saga of political extremism exploiting the fear of manufactured enemies from within.
CHAPTER 4
*In the waning days of the year 1958, the John Birch Society was formed by Robert Welch, an ultraconservative politically, and an inveterate conspiracy theorist, who was convinced of a vast internal communist plot to subjugate American democracy from within. Buoyed by a prodigious sum of financial resources, allowing him maximum exposure of his bizarre postulations, Welch groomed Bircherism to become the next iteration of McCarthyism. In a 1961 press leak, it was revealed that Welch was spreading rumors Eisenhower was a communist, a claim so ludicrous that leading GOP conservative, Barry Goldwater, was faced with the potential dilemma of alienating either the Birchers or establishment conservatives, depending on his response to Welch’s accusation. As he weighed his options for a 1964 presidential campaign, Goldwater the populist, in a calculated risk, chose to appeal to the extremist wing of the Party.
CHAPTER 5
*During a March 1962 Madison Square Garden rally, at which he received a 5 1/2 minute ovation, Barry Goldwater appeared to be in the catbird’s seat as the consensus 1964 Republican presidential nominee. With his campaign able to exploit the personal indiscretions of primary opponent, California Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Goldwater rode the momentum to easily clinch the nomination on the first ballot. Introduced to the national political scene was a folksy spokesperson for Goldwater, with a natural charm and commanding presence, one Ronald Reagan. In the premature post mortem for the extreme element within the GOP, deriving from Johnson’s 1964 landslide victory over Goldwater, there was a failure to recognize the radicals’ entrenchment within the party, as well as their determination and staying power.
CHAPTER 6
*A politically untested Ronald Reagan stepped into the limelight following Goldwater’s humiliating defeat to Johnson, vying for the governorship of California in a 1966 race against the Democratic incumbent, Pat Brown. He deftly deflected charges from the Democrats that he was beholden to the John Birch Society, while simultaneously appeasing the Birchers by publicly refusing to estrange them from the Republican Party. Nixon, in his gubernatorial defeat to Brown four years earlier, had alienated the Birchers; Goldwater, in his unsuccessful presidential campaign against Johnson, embraced them unreservedly; Reagan, to his advantage, strategically placed them at arms length, while coyly casting in their direction a furtive wink. Ronald Reagan, who would proudly proclaim himself as a political outsider, adroitly camouflaged the radicalized, extremist juggernaut appropriating the Republican identity, thereby allowing him to capture the governor’s race in mandate fashion.
CHAPTER 7
*The 1968 Republican Presidential Primary race featured former New York governor, Nelson Rockefeller; rising GOP star, Ronald Reagan; and the resurgent Richard Nixon; pitted against the Independent Party candidate, George Wallace. Mindful that Wallace’s racist message resonated with Southern Republicans, Nixon, becoming more attuned to the white segregationist voter, enlisted the support of influential South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond to deliver the Southern vote. Traditionally, the Party of Lincoln had captured the Northern Black vote while conceding the South, but Civil Rights legislation passed during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations enabled Nixon to tap into the rage of Southern white segregationists. Winning the election by the thinnest of margins, President elect Nixon predictably reassured a deeply fractured nation of his commitment to restoring unity to a divided America.
CHAPTER 8
*Despite a stagnant economy, reflected by Democratic gains in the 1970 midterm elections, Nixon and the Republican Party focused on the long term potential of a polarized America in the context of reelection prognostications for 1972. Portraying Democratic nominee, George McGovern, as a left wing radical, Nixon was a shoo in for reelection in the 1972 presidential contest. His Southern strategy of proselytizing disenchanted whites, who felt betrayed by the Democratic Party, played a major role in the wide margin of victory. However, in August of 1974, he was forced to resign in disgrace, following revelations of the Watergate coverup, leaving us his legacy of two disparate and irreconcilable Americas.
CHAPTER 9
*Ronald Reagan, no longer a political neophyte following his two terms as governor of California, challenged incumbent Gerald Ford for the 1976 GOP presidential nomination. Though Reagan stumbled in the early state primaries, with Jesse Helms, North Carolina’s segregationist senator, campaigning in his corner, he handily carried the state, serving to rejuvenate a faltering candidacy. In a tight race, Ford was ultimately awarded the Republican nomination, Reagan having angered the ultra conservatives with his announcement that he would choose a running mate more palatable to the moderate wing of the party. Democrat Jimmy Carter would defeat Ford in the general election, the Democrats would maintain their sizable majorities in Congress, and the Republican Party would be left questioning its very survival.
CHAPTER 10
*Jimmy Carter’s beleaguered presidency, hampered by a recessive economy and the populist antigovernment movement, was irreparably doomed in the wake of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Evangelical preacher, Jerry Falwell, and his “Moral Majority” disciples, breathed into the conservative movement a spirit of Christian Nationalism, launching a crusade of racism, homophobia, and illiberalism. Moderate voices within the Republican Party were increasingly rendered inaudible, drowned out by the incessant cacophony of the New Right conspiracy theorists. In announcing his candidacy for the 1980 Presidential election, Ronald Reagan would align himself with the fundametalist theological perspectives embraced by the Christian Right.
CHAPTER 11
* In the 1980 Republican Presidential Primary, Ronald Reagan exploited a “Guns and Jesus” platform, capitalizing on the unholy alliance between the NRA and Christian Right. Championing the unchurched Reagan as an emissary for Christian values, the Moral Majority mounted a slander campaign against his Democratic opponent, Jimmy Carter, shamelessly questioning the practicing Southern Baptist’s faith. Reagan outmaneuvered Carter on the debate stage, utilizing his equanimous rhetorical style, offering simplistic solutions to a nation in crisis, and artfully dodging or rebutting Carter’s more challenging, yet pragmatic alternatives. Ronald Reagan, the populist benefactor of a Christian Nationalist mandate, successfully denied Jimmy Carter’s quest for a second term.
CHAPTER 12
*The Reagan Administration exploited the national debate on homosexuality in order to agitate and mobilize its homophobic base. The president was able to navigate a path between the rabid evangelical zealots, who ranted that he was moving too slowly on their agenda of hate, and establishment Republicans, who decried the radical intolerance of the Christian Right. The global movement to freeze the production of nuclear arms, gaining wide support within the United States, was countered by Reaganite propaganda, promoting the conspiracy theory of a Communist plot to disarm America. In a Reaganesque script, while the evangelical prophets of doom preached their message of gloom, Ronald Reagan, ever the actor, assumed the role of the messianic savior.
CHAPTER 13
*The 1984 presidential contest was a reprise of the 1980 election, with Reagan’s campaign for reelection focused on the proselytization of southern white democrats. As was the case with Jimmy Carter four years earlier, the Democratic nominee, Walter Mondale, was mercilessly demonized by the evangelical right, with Reagan capturing his second term in a landslide. A major component of Reagan’s populist allure resided in his uncanny ability to project a pristine image of a utopian America, and market this sanitized illusion to a substantial bloc of the voting public. Yet, his administration was complicit in antidemocratic activities, such as the surreptitious funding of arms sales to the Nicaraguan contras.
CHAPTER 14
*Pat Robertson electrified the Christian evangelicals when he threw his hat into the ring for the 1988 GOP presidential nomination. George H. W. Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, coaxed the eventual 1988 GOP presidential nominee, by nature reserved and evenhanded, to engage in a vicious negative attack against his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, branding him as an unpatriotic liberal soft on crime. At the Republican National Convention, the power brokers within the Christian Right, including the irrepressible Pat Robertson, heartily blessed the Party’s nomination of Vice President Bush. Dukakis underestimated the lethal impact of the Bush campaign’s character assassination on his electability, choosing to stay above the fray by running a positive campaign, and ultimately falling victim to his rival’s perpetual slings.
CHAPTER 15
*In 1988 conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh burst onto the scene, establishing a new norm for unfiltered, liberal baiting, hyperpartisan monologue targeted to a politically extreme right audience. While the incumbent Bush carried the day in the 1992 GOP presidential primary, populist Pat Buchanan resonated with a growing number of disaffected white malcontents, who were disillusioned with a Republican Party they felt had betrayed their allegiance. In the general election Bush ingratiated himself with Limbaugh, who had endorsed Buchanan in the primary, yet responded to the president’s overtures by announcing his support publicly to his vast audience of listeners. Bill Clinton would be awarded the keys to the oval office, but the culture wars instigated by the social conservatives had engulfed the nation, precluding a clear mandate.
CHAPTER 16
*The death by suicide of Vince Foster, White House counsel and confidant to Bill Clinton, served as kindling for rumors, innuendo, and conspiracy theories from the far right. Accusations of a cover-up of Hillary Clinton’s controversial Whitewater land deal implied complicity by Foster, allegedly triggering his despondency and eventual suicide. The mere volume of conspiracy theories lodged against the Clintons and their allies loomed large in paving the way for a Republican rout in the1994 midterms, as the GOP captured both houses of Congress.
CHAPTER 17
*House Speaker Newt Gingrich held entitlement programs such as Medicare hostage, following through on his promise to shut down the government pending an agreement on budget cuts. Bob Dole, the Republican nominee for the 1996 GOP campaign to deny Bill Clinton a second term, failed to resonate with Gingrich’s extremist contingent within the party. While the Republicans retained their majorities in both chambers of Congress, Clinton waltzed into a second term, easily defeating a Dole campaign that rang decidedly off message with the GOP’s entrenched radical element.
CHAPTER 18
*Promoting himself as an establishment conservative, as his father was wont to do during his tenure as president, George W. Bush was destined to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2000. While Bush continued to deliver a message of tolerance and inclusion, his campaign was bankrolled by the likes of the Christian coalition and NRA, with the expectation that their chosen candidate was obliged to enact their respective agendas. Bush prevailed in the general election by a razor thin margin over Vice President Al Gore, Florida’s recount being suspended on a controversial decision by the Supreme Court.
CHAPTER 19
*President Bush would capitulate to the Christian Right in an effort to salvage his 2004 reelection campaign by reversing his previous stance and promoting its homophobic efforts to nullify gay marriage. Bush’s Democratic opponent, decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry, who would eventually voice opposition to the war following his military service, had his campaign victimized by unfounded allegations questioning his honor. Arguably, Bush prevailed on election night in a close race by ingratiating himself with a cadre of socially conservative pastors who, in mobilizing their congregants, awarded him with the evangelical vote.
CHAPTER 20
*Winner of the 2008 Republican nomination for president, John McCain, who had repudiated the radical element of the Christian Right in the 2000 presidential primary, would solicit their support eight years later. Running mate, Sarah Palin relished the role of attack dog, as she unreservedly and without restraint unleashed slanderous diatribes targeting McCain’s Democratic rival, Barack Obama. The Palinized version of Republicanism, while leaving an indelible stain on the Party going forward, would result in a GOP shutout, with the Democrats sweeping both houses of Congress, and Barack Obama stepping into history as America’s first president of color.
CHAPTER 21
*Following the passage of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature achievement, Sarah Palin’s PAC disseminated a map rendering for the 2010 midterms, depicting Democratically controlled districts in crosshairs. Denunciation of the Affordable Care Act being a litmus test for Tea Party candidates, well funded fledglings upset establishment incumbents in a number of GOP primary races. In the general election, Democrats would lose the House, while Republicans narrowed the Democratic majority in the Senate, and performed well in state legislature races.
CHAPTER 22
*In large part, due to the poor performance by the slate of Tea Party candidates, Mitt Romney backed into the 2012 general election as the Republican Presidential nominee. Saddled with a reputedly bland nominee, and witnessing a derailed Tea Party juggernaut, unable to sustain the momentum from a 2010 midterm landslide, the GOP failed to deny Obama a second term, while losing seats in both the House and Senate. Bolstered by a resurgent Tea Party, and seeking to frame the 2014 midterms as a referendum on Obama’s leadership, the GOP picked up the House and padded their majority in the Senate.
CHAPTER 23
*In June 2015, Donald Trump, in a populist, digressive, anti-establishment, longwinded appeal, targeted to a disaffected subset of Americans, announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican Presidential Primary. At the obscene spectacle in Cleveland, gaudily parading as the 2016 version of the Republican National Convention, an outpouring of anti Hillary Clinton hostility was on display, as Trump’s pompous, chest beating acceptance speech resonated with his restive audience. While losing the popular vote, Trump was able to claim the 2016 presidency via polling a majority in the electoral college.
CHAPTER 24
*Announcing his intention to run for a second term in 2020, Trump cast himself and his supporters as victims of the liberal establishment, a faction commited to waging war on traditional American values. As the date of the 2020 election drew near, Donald Trump advanced the conspiracy theory of the “stolen election”. Refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should the election not go his way, Trump was in defiance of one of the cardinal tenets of democracy.
EPILOGUE
*In the wake of the January 6, 2021 Trump incited storming of the nation’s Capitol, the former president was publicly chastised by his party’s Senate and House leadership, only to have them rein in their criticism and renew their support within a matter of days. Prior to the insurrection, despite Attorney General Bill Barr’s assessment that Joe Biden was the legitimate victor in the 2020 election, there was a concerted effort on the part of the far right power brokers to amplify the stolen election ruse. The author convincingly argues the point that, in electing him to the presidency, each Trump voter is complicit in the perpetuation of conspiracy theories, prejudices, and falsehoods, made possible by his coronation in 2016. Trump’s base of support, his loyal voting bloc, has shown no inclination to heed his naysayers within the party, making allegiance to their chosen leader a litmus test for GOP politicians. Allowing no recourse for dissent within the ranks, Trump is the singular voice of the Party, cravenly parroted by an obsequious Republican aisle of Congress. QAnon, the online dispensary for bizarre conspiracy theories, became politically mainstream with the election of devotees Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert to Congress. Having the opportunity via Trump’s defeat in 2020, the Republican Party has failed to manifest a course correction, projecting the ominous specter that Trumpism will transcend an aging Trump, with an ambitious slate of pretenders to the throne waiting in the wings. The author leaves his reader to ponder the existential, yet to be answered, question of whether American democracy will survive the day.
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Will the GOP learn from the facts presented in this book?
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