With the Blue Wave in congressional races last November, his Nostradamus impression might seem spot on. Yet the GOP has been branded down-and-out before. The Great Depression, which struck in 1929 under Republican President Herbert Hoover, wiped out GOP chances for a generation. Only in 1952 did Republicans finally win the White House again with Dwight Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War and presided over peace and prosperity.
Another time the GOP seemed DOA was after the 1964 election. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson was reelected with 61 percent of the national vote. Democrats also captured two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of Congress — much as they have in the California Legislature today. The defeat of the Republican nominee, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the epitome of flinty Western individualism, seemed to doom his brand of conservatism.
Yet the Democratic Party itself soon felt to squabbling about civil rights, the Vietnam War and other policies. As we have learned in the controversy over Joe Biden’s chumminess with segregationist Democratic senators in the 1970s, it was those Democratic Old Bulls who most opposed the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. By contrast, Republicans in Congress in that day almost unanimously supported those reforms.
And it was segregationist Democratic Alabama Gov. George Wallace who split to form the American Independent Party in 1968. His slogan as governor: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!”
That split among Democrats helped elect Republican Richard Nixon, a native son of Orange County, to the presidency in 1968. He had problems, of course, taking too long to end the Vietnam War, and with Watergate. Yet he won in a landside in 1972 against George McGovern, the Bernie Sanders of that day. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won in a landslide. His policies of tax cuts, regulation cuts and strong defense are the winning policies that continue to enliven the GOP.
Now let’s look at today’s Democratic Party. All its candidates back repealing President Trump’s tax cuts, even though 90 percent of middle-class Americans are being gouged less by the IRS. All favor some form of socialized medicine. And as we saw in the first debate, there’s a generational division over civil rights.
GG