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November 18, 2008
Exclusive: Wall Street Benefits from Attacks on Conservatives
Christine Todd Whitman, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during President George W. Bush’s first term, and her speechwriter Robert M. Bostock, have blamed “social fundamentalists” for John McCain’s loss in the presidential race. In a November 14th op-ed in the Washington Post, they argued that while McCain had won the social conservative vote, in doing so, he and the Republican Party had lost the “moderate” vote which was the key to the election.
Whitman is a self-styled moderate, so she has to find some other part of the GOP to blame for the defeat of a fellow moderate like Sen. McCain. In 2004, she and Bostock published it’s My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America. In this book, they argued that the Republican Party had been taken hostage by "the people who base their votes on such social issues as abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. Unless the GOP freed itself from their grip, we argued, it would so alienate itself from the broad center of the American electorate that it would become increasingly marginalized and find itself out of power.”
President Bush was re-elected in 2004, and carried the key state of Ohio because there was a ballot proposal banning homosexual marriages that mobilized the public. As the New York Times reported, “The amendments, which define marriage as between only a man and a woman, passed overwhelmingly in all 11 states, clearly receiving support from Democrats and independents as well as Republicans. Only in Oregon and Michigan did the amendment receive less than 60 percent of the vote.” So it would appear that social issues cut across party lines and do not isolate Republicans.
Whitman blames McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, writing that it, “cost the ticket support among those moderate voters who saw it as a cynical sop to social fundamentalists,” Was it really social issues that turned the public off to the GOP? Or did some other issue dominate the election? Whitman never mentions the economy. Exit polls show overwhelmingly that the financial collapse and looming recession were the issues uppermost in voters’ minds, and that the GOP was blamed for mishandling the economy in an “incompetent” manner. Social issues still ran conservative in 2008. California, for example, again voted to ban gay marriages even as Barack Obama carried the state for the Democrats.
Polls do not indicate any shift in the beliefs of Americans, but rather to a loss of confidence in GOP leaders. Republicans were seen to fail in two of their three core areas, national security and economics, costing them control of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008.
President George W. Bush was never more popular than when American tanks were rolling into Baghdad. It was not the decision to go to war in Iraq and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein that cost the GOP support. A majority of Democrats, understanding the American mood after 9/11, also initially supported the use of force. It was the incompetence of the plan drawn up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that gave America’s foreign enemies and domestic critics the opening they needed. Rumsfeld’s dislike of expensive ground troops and nation-building created a power vacuum after the fall of Baghdad that al Qaeda terrorists and Iranian-backed militias exploited in a wave of violence that nearly defeated the U.S. occupation.
Rumsfeld was a “cheap hawk,” unwilling to commit sufficient resources to fight wars the way they needed to be fought. His theories about airpower and technology replacing, rather than supporting, ground forces neglected why wars are fought. Wars are fought for political ends, meaning the control of territory and people. Boots on the ground are required to establish new governing authorities friendly to the United States. Rumsfeld could not adjust his pre-war concepts of small forces and short conflicts.
Gen. David Petraeus turned Iraq around with the troop surge supported by Rumsfeld’s replacement, Robert Gates. Secretary Gates also undertook the expansion of Army and Marine strength, something Rumsfeld had opposed. By the summer of 2008, the public had been won back to the view that McCain, an early supporter of the troop surge, was to be trusted on Iraq more than Sen. Obama who was advocating an immediate withdrawal.
But then the financial crisis hit, sending an already declining stock market into free fall. Two great pillars of a center-Right middle class society, personal savings and home ownership, were hit hard. The GOP as “the party of business” was mortally wounded as its “friends” on Wall Street betrayed the public’s trust. Big Business is desperate to shift the focus somewhere else, and social conservatives are their favorite target.
There are three factions in the Republican Party. The social conservatives, the national security hawks, and the “free market” economists. This last group has felt uncomfortable in league with the other two, since social values and the common defense place constraints on what business can do in its own self-interest. Whitman’s diatribe can be put in this larger framework, which goes back to the very start of the Republican revival.
The Republicans won control of both houses of Congress in 1994, opening a dozen years of apparent GOP majority status. Yet, just as the 104th Congress convened, Fortune magazine (February 6, 1995) ran a cover story expressing the concern of Wall Street as to the direction of the party and its “populist” conservative ideology. Under the title “The New GOP to Big Business: Drop Dead,” Fortune complained that Republicans were no longer primarily concerned with advancing corporate interests. The new Right was focused on larger social issues, and one could add national security as well. Those who supported prayer in school, the right to life and the National Rifle Association were targeted by Fortune.
According to the article, “Business influence began giving way to ideology, of course, with the ascent of that wrinkly antiestablishmentarian Ronald Reagan, though it rebounded somewhat during the Bush interregnum.” But Wall Street did not have to worry for long. The Congressional GOP quickly hung up a “for sale” sign, and invited in the business lobby to write its legislation. House Majority Leader Tom Delay created the K Street Project to herd corporate campaign money into Republican coffers. As Fortune had pointed out, most business PAC funding went to the Democrats when they were in power, and DeLay wanted to send a message that it was time for Wall Street to change with the times and shift its support to the GOP. Yet, this was exactly why the social values and national security wings of the party distrusted the business community. Wall Street has no party loyalty or even national loyalty in the age of commercial globalization. Fortune magazine itself is a prime example of a transnational orientation, holding a series of Global Forums that have focused on trade and investment in China.
A principled political movement seeking a public mandate to rule the most powerful nation on earth cannot be built on a narrow foundation of self-centered entities that care nothing about principles or the public. The lust for money to fund campaign ads and think tanks corrupted the GOP’s ability to perform its governing duties competently, and led to its downfall. Wall Street took control of the economic wing of the Bush administration from its inception. Candidates may talk about the small businessman or champion the aspirations of “Joe the Plumber” but it is Big Business that supplies the top officials in revolving door administrations, dominates industry associations, and hires the lobbyists of K Street. Covered by the simplistic mantra of “free markets,” corporate interests were allowed to run riot – and then failed. But they do not want to be blamed for either the economic collapse or the backlash against the GOP.
Too many conservatives embrace the “free market” outlook without knowing anything about its radical philosophical origins in the early 19th century, what is now called libertarianism. It is the ideology that subverts traditional social and family values, and which undermines national security. It is the corporate lobby that opposes sanctions on rogue regimes and resists limits on what advanced technology can be sold to China. They believe it is their right to make money by any means possible, including in alliance with foreign governments hostile to the United States.
Conservatives do not have to give up their belief in limited government, only their tolerance of unlimited corporations. What the social and security factions on the right have in common is that both are rooted in American soil. The economics faction, which foolishly believes it has moved above or beyond such national concerns, must be brought back into the fold. Its massive failure trying to operate as a lone wolf should lead to its chastisement.
A strong America with traditional values needs an economy that can provide middle class family incomes. People should be able to buy property and to plan for the future. The nation needs sound finances and an advanced industrial base to sustain its position as a superpower in world affairs. The role of business is to provide the material needs of the country, with profits in line with achievements. That is the true value of capitalism. Maintaining a center-Right political majority depends on all three factions working together for the common good.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in defense and trade issues. E-mail him at HawkinsUSA@aol.com.
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