Where have all the Republicans gone?

Gone to prayer meeting every one,
The gays to roast 'til very well done.

The above is admittedly polemical, superficial and flip. I may be
ready to enter political life.

In my youth, my parents were Republicans in the Solid South dominated politically by Democrats. Local elections were perfunctory confirmations of Democratic primaries or caucuses. So my parents gritted their teeth and participated in these alien party activities. To do otherwise would have been to disenfranchise themselves, at least at the local and state level. After the long Democratic dominance of the presidency, the first Republican national victory since 1928 was reason to wake an eight-year-old boy, me, in the small hours of election night to tell him that we had a new president.

Remember who spoke these words, back in 1961?

In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Imagine George W. Bush or his Vice President, or the Secretary
of Defense saying that now.

No, you can't, nor can I.

Of course, Dwight D. Eisenhower wasn't really a Republican politician.
He was a military hero who for a while in the years before 1952 was
courted by both the Democrats and the Republicans.

Robert Taft, his main competitor within the Republican Party for
the 1952 presidential nomination, was very much a core Republican,
known as "Mr. Republican," in fact.

Opposed to the New Deal in all its ramifications, mistrustful of the
"internationalist" Republicans who favored alliances and economic
interaction with similarly disposed Europeans and Asian powers, Taft
voted against the Marshall Plan, and domestically co-authored the
Taft-Hartley Act, which sought to hobble labor unions.

Taft was in favor of a "sky cavalry" military intervention force to
punish governments and parties abroad who directly threatened
liberty within this country. "Nation Building" or missionary
zeal for bringing democracy (note little "d") to the totalitarian
nations of the world would be anathema to Taft.

In the days when I began to be politically aware, late fifties and
early sixties, the "Rockefeller Republicans," firmly in the
"internationalist" camp, were opposed by Barry Goldwater, whose
beliefs would undergird the later "Reagan Revolution." In the 1964
campaign, Goldwater suffered for his remarks criticizing
Social Security and suggesting that TVA be dismantled. What
goes around comes around; George W. Bush is attacking
Social Security now in the guise of "saving" it.

Richard Nixon, politically astute and unburdened by ideology,
succeeded where Goldwater failed by avoiding dangerous crusades
against popular social programs. Instead, Nixon began assembling
the first building blocks of the present Republican power base
with his "southern strategy," an opportunistic courting of
Southerners angered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and
fearful of black political power, which seemed identified
with the Democratic Party.

Thus the cracking and fissuring of the old Solid South began
to present opportunities for Republicans both at the national
and local levels.

It was left to the Reaganauts to forge the alliance of "social conservative" issues, plus the religious fundamentalists, with the racially-based southern Republican recruits. Two landslide elections later, Reagan's revolution had coattails long enough to coast George H. W. Bush into office.

Somewhere along the way, however, the ghosts of Eisenhower, Taft and Rockefeller had faded into faint shadows. All the social and racial issues which worked for the new Republicans seemed inextricably entwined with opposition to taxes in toto. Even when spending could not be cut enough to avoid deficits, raising taxes was now the equivalent of Goldwater opposing Social Security. George H. W. Bush paid the price for raising taxes, with a little help from loose cannon Ross Perot siphoning off votes Bush might have claimed.

Political charisma was enough to keep Clinton in office for two terms, fellatio, forty million dollars of investigation and impeachment notwithstanding. Lame Democratic candidates gave George W. Bush the two terms his father did not achieve. His father's tax lesson learned, GWB pursues tax reduction in the face of huge deficits, without political costs-so far.

My parents are both dead, now, so I can't ask them how the Republicans of today match up with the Republicans they so fervently supported in the fifties. Both of my parents were moderate in their social views, and fiscally conservative. My father was irked enough at G.H.W. Bush to join the Perot defection, not so much in opposition to taxes as disgust with continuing unbusinesslike deficit spending.

Perhaps my parents would also ask where all the Republicans have gone.