When the Greatest Generation rebelled against FDR, in the 1960s, they didn’t stop with Nixon.
Or even Goldwater.
Nixon, who had been Eisenhower’s VP when liberals dominated the political conversation, embodied the New Right’s Id but resisted implementing its worst impulses in policy. He wound up as the last “liberal” President, and the ascendent right hated him. Hates him still.
I know. I was one of them. What young conservatives wanted in 1971 was Ronald Reagan.
There’s a quiet revolt happening now, among people my kids’ age and younger. It’s not just a revolt against Trump, but against Reaganism. It’s not going to stop with Joe Biden. He’s the Nixon of our time, hated by many who should be his biggest fans, given his success.
Today’s media can’t hear it. It’s almost entirely owned by right-wing billionaires and oligarchs. It’s much like yesterday’s media, grown old on a generation of free broadcast licenses and monopoly ad profits, who didn’t see the New Right coming.
When Republicans turn away from Trump, they don’t move to Chris Christie. They switch sides. They don’t stop with support for what Biden is doing, like Reagan-Bush advisor Bruce Bartlett. They don’t hedge their bets, as former Quayle advisor William Kristol has.
It’s like scales fall from their eyes.
Young people are turning left faster because they don’t have a history of supporting any conservative cause. The only right winger they know is Trump, or his followers. Many have become Berniecrats, they’re no more likely to stop there than their grandparents stopped with Reagan.
Other people are switching sides as they learn what Trumpist policies do. Republican women are shocked to lose their bodily autonomy. Gay Republicans are shocked to be treated like German Jews in Weimar Germany. Even Republican businessmen are shocked to see what has happened to their insurance rates, and their ability to fill hard jobs that pay very little.
Politics begins with what’s happening in your home. A Republican whose kid comes out as LGBTQ, or whose daughter gets knocked-up or whose house gets blown away by climate change, they question more than tariffs and tax rates.
They get mad. At first it is kept deep in the heart because there seems no proper place for it. Republicans in my hometown of Massapequa, back in the late 60s, were shocked to see their neighbors supporting George Wallace. They weren’t paying attention to what was happening around the poker and mahjongg tables. They didn’t hear the conversations taking place in auto repair yards or at my dad’s TV repair shop.
Something like that is happening now. My spidey sense is picking it up. It’s just starting. And it will keep growing well after I’ve left this Earth.
Joe Biden is a conservative just as Richard Nixon was a liberal. Only in retrospect.
