The Origins of the All-Out Republican Assault on Democrats

the modern iteration is Newt Gingrich’s handiwork

The hyper-radical rightward shift of the Republican party these past ten years began three decades ago. It was led by Newt Gingrich former House Speaker and congressman from the Atlanta suburbs, who launched his political career during Reagan’s presidency. A newly minted Republican representative, Gingrich was known as young back-bench bomb thrower, but he had a well thought out agenda and a sense of the times. He correctly determined that Republican voters had had enough of Democratic domination of Congress, and were tired of feeling marginalized politically and socially. For his part, Gingrich was incensed that the House leadership at the time, particularly minority leader Robert Michel, continued to compromise with Democrats. Gingrich was determined to put an end to it.

His efforts faced tremendous resistance at the outset, though, from both moderate and conservative Republicans. Undeterred, Gingrich began using the language of war, employing apocalyptic terminology to describe Democrats and their policies and values. He taught Republicans to use such language about Democrats as “betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors.” (Card 136)

As Julian Zelizer noted, “Gingrich had come to understand that in the modern media era, politics was as much about perception as substance.” He chose as his media forum regular press conferences, but more notably the House floor. Gingrich and his followers, including Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, began using the House floor as a stage. They would, on a nightly basis, take to the floor to give what were known as one-minute speeches. To the unknowing observer, they were delivering dramatic orations to a packed House, but in reality, they were taking advantage of the fact that the C-SPAN cameras were fixed at a static location in the House gallery and only displayed the member who happened to be speaking. The House chamber was often completely empty.

Initially derided by members of both parties as a carnival stunt, they were dismayed to find out that people at home were actually watching and cheering on the revolutionaries. At one point, a frustrated Speaker Tip O’Neill had the cameras pan out to expose Gingrich and his colleagues addressing an empty chamber. It made no difference. The conservative revolution in the House was complete. Soon, Gingrich was speaker and everything changed. As Michael Tomasky writes, “In a phrase, this is what Gingrich did: He brought the culture war to Congress.”

What did Gingrich want? As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein tell it, quite accurately, he wanted to blow up the House in an effort to save it. Gingrich sought to degrade the institution in the eyes of the public so as to induce a groundswell of support for radical change. He ended all inter-party cooperation and launched a ceaseless barrage of attacks against the Democrats on a broad front.

By the time Gingrich’s takeover was complete, the role of the Democratic party in Southern politics was diminished to the point of irrelevance. Lyndon Johnson’s prophecy after the passage of civil rights legislation in 1964-65 came true: the Democrats lost the south for a generation.

Democrats, during this period, adopted a strategy that was to lead to the ultimate fraying of the party’s bond between working people. Congressional campaigns began to rely less on unions for support. Jacob Hacker writes that, between 1974 and 1980, labor PAC donations slipped dramatically to less than 25% of all PAC contributions by 1980. “Nearly half of Senate incumbents’ campaign funds came from labor PACs in the mid-1970s. A decade later, the share was below one-fifth.” For a while, the strategy worked-Democratic coffers swelled. It was enough to get Clinton elected in 1992. Then in 1994, it all came crashing down.

While the Democrats had been raising money from Republican donors willing to hedge their bets, Newt Gingrich was traveling the country offering Americans a different choice. In November of 1994, Gingrich and his revolutionaries convincingly swept the Democrats out of the majority for the first time since the early 1950s. To say the Democrats were stunned would be an understatement. Clinton was to remain personally popular even through his scandal and impeachment in 1999, but the legislative situation was quite different. Bipartisan initiatives like welfare reform and the 1998 crime bill hindered the Democrats claim to the progressive mantle, leading to an intra-party battle that continues today.

The war that Gingrich launched in the 1980s has come at a cost for all sides, though. Congress’ public approval ratings have descended steadily to their nadir today, at levels close to single digits. The last decade has seen the rise of social ideology as a principal element of Republican orthodoxy. For nearly its entire history, the party was largely skewed toward an economic agenda. That changed with the Tea Party. The evangelical community began inserting its values into the overall Republican agenda, and with that came a dogmatic approach to the party agenda. Debate was stifled in the interest of ideological purity, and the moderates in the Republican party were effectively neutered or ejected from office. There is now a uniformity of thought in the party that brooks no dissent, whether on taxes, the size of government, immigration, abortion or any other issue.

Before Trump, this war was fought out in the halls of Congress. After Trump, it was fought in society as a whole. Congress became merely an echo chamber for the passions of the day. As the Republicans became more ideological, the idea of common ground with Democrats faded and ultimately disappeared. Every issue became caught up in an existential battle: this applied to both sides. Whether it was tax cuts or judicial appointments, there was no room for compromise. With the rise of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, the war was joined in earnest.

Today, Gingrich is a Trump adviser. The same tactics employed thirty years ago are today on steroids. The nastiness of the party’s and its leader’s campaign dates back decades, but they believe it will still work today. Time will tell.