The Working Class Republican

by Henry Olsen

  Some politicians might have tried to hide their views from their backers. Not Reagan. He defended his tax hike and his budget to all comers, even his conservative supporters. Two nearly identical speeches given in April 1967 before the premier conservative grassroots groups in California, the California Republican Assembly (CRA) and the United Republicans of California, bear this out.

  Those speeches emphasized that the tax hikes were necessary not only to balance the budget, but also to pay for new necessary spending. He told the groups that half of the record tax hike, which had at that point not yet been approved, was needed to pay off accumulated debt and to set the state budget on course to being regularly balanced.24 Another quarter was needed to maintain services after population growth and inflation, and the final quarter would finance needed property tax relief.

  His defense of his budget was also instructive. He proclaimed that he was seeking only to economize government, not eliminate “needed services or programs.” His aim was cutting “fat and waste,” and he had gone as far with that as he could. He noted that he had promised to cut government “without hurting the truly needy and truly deserving.” To that end, he supported the inclusions in his budget of salary increases for state employees, more funding for disabled children, and other new spending that had not been proposed by his liberal predecessor.

  Most conservatives gladly backed him. There is no indication that conservative activists tried to lobby against his proposals. His poll ratings did not slip; no rumors of conservative revolt reached reporters’ ears. Conservatives were not yet in a mood to hunt “RINOs” who strayed from the purist orthodoxy. The same California conservatives who had backed a man in 1964 who had pledged to repeal most of modern government eagerly backed a man in 1967 who was raising their taxes to keep most of it.

  Most, but not all. Some conservatives, people whom Reagan would label in his autobiography as “radical” or “ultra” conservatives, did turn against him.25 They clearly saw that he was not going to lead the fight to value liberty ahead of government programs that arguably helped people lead better lives. They wanted someone who thought the drive for civil rights legislation was ultimately a drive for government power, and thus must be stopped at all costs. They were people who believed deeply in the vision Barry Goldwater had set forth in The Conscience of a Conservative, and by the end of 1967 they knew in their hearts that Ronald Reagan was not right.

  CBS news discovered this when it went to California to film a documentary on the rising star. Airing on December 12, 1967, “What about Ronald Reagan?” introduced the nation to a man who political elites were already saying could be the next Republican nominee for president. Far from castigating him as a loony right-winger, the hour-long documentary explained the roots of Reagan’s appeal in evenhanded terms while also giving his critics a chance to present their views. Some of those critics, it turned out, were on the right.

  John Schmitz was the most prominent anti-Reagan conservative. Asked to explain why he thought “the deeds did not match the words,” Schmitz quickly named four items: the tax hike, the failure to cut spending, the failure to repeal the Rumford Act, and the backtracking on a promise to create a commission to investigate reported Communist infiltration of the University of California.26 Another conservative summed up the “ultra’s” feelings: they had been “betrayed.”

  One disappointed conservative went so far as to write a short book detailing Reagan’s conservative apostasies. Here’s the Rest of Him, written in cooperation with Schmitz by a conservative activist, Kent Steffgen, is a difficult read. Its combination of lurid polemics and over-the-top characterization with a degree of inside baseball analysis of personnel moves involving long-forgotten politicians can leave one thinking it is something best left to the fever swamps of the Right. But one should look beyond that, for beneath the off-putting tone and in-the-weeds focus Steffgen was absolutely right. Ronald Reagan was not, and never had been, the sort of conservative that Steffgen and other activists wanted.

  Steffgen’s essential complaint was that Reagan was reconciled to the structure of modern government that he had inherited from the Democrats. Reagan’s second budget, which significantly increased spending and included some of the new spending items Reagan had defended before the CRA, showed that he was “committed to the liberal or socialist premise that a large population demands a large government to rule over it.”27 Steffgen argued that Reagan should have eliminated a host of programs that primarily benefitted blacks, eliminated state subsidies for special education and community colleges, cut university spending by forcing tenured professors to increase their teaching loads, eliminated the portion of Medi-Cal that went for medically needy (as opposed to poverty-stricken) individuals, and dramatically cut back on AFDC spending.28 In short, Steffgen thought Reagan should have governed like Goldwater.

  We can see the vast difference between these two views in how Steffgen described Medi-Cal and the importance he ascribed to opposition to civil rights measures. The former he repeatedly described as “socialized medicine.”29 As such, the “only logical solution” for a conservative was “to advocate outright repeal” of Medi-Cal. Reagan’s approach of simply trying to cut waste and place the program on sound fiscal footing missed the point.

  Even on that basis, however, the problem would still remain. In Steffgen’s view, medical care, the cost of which under Medi-Cal was raised through state taxes, should be financed precisely the other way around: first, from one’s relatives; second, from one’s club, organization, or fraternal order; if still more money were needed, then third, from the city in which one lived; fourth, from the county; and fifth, and last, from the state.30

  The state and the federal government should be “the very last public agenc[ies]” to levy taxes to pay for medical spending on the poor, Steffgen argued, because they are “the farthest removed from the level of collection and, therefore, the most liable to irresponsibility.”31 Of course, Reagan had always rejected those ideas, as demonstrated through his support for the Kerr-Mills Act, his characterization of Medi-Cal as “help,” and his clear statements even in his televised address on behalf of Goldwater that he believed conservatives were for telling Americans that no one should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds.

  Steffgen’s emphasis on opposition to civil rights is even more revealing. Reagan’s change of heart on the Rumford Act placed him behind “the minority view—the 15% minority—at a time when the American majority is mad enough about civil rights pressures to bring on a second U.S. Civil War.”32 Reagan’s statement that he had backed the goals of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all of his life met with Steffgen’s scorn, as did Reagan’s statement that he would never patronize a business that practiced discrimination.33 Reagan’s oft-repeated statement that he would back the enforcement of civil rights principles “at the point of a bayonet if necessary,” as Ike had done at Little Rock and Kennedy at Oxford to enforce mandated integration of public schools and universities, was considered by Steffgen to be both contrary to the Constitution’s guarantee of property rights and political suicide.34 In light of this, Steffgen’s recommendation that conservatives consider backing the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, for president in 1968 because he “had the only stand on the all-important civil rights issue which is known to reflect the true majority interests” makes all too much sense.35

  It is tempting to ignore Steffgen’s analysis because of the dripping racism that pervades his book. To do so ignores how ingrained opposition to civil rights was in some precincts of the Right at that time. In Conscience, Goldwater—who was no racist—addressed his constitutional objection to civil rights legislation before he addressed any single economic or foreign policy issue, thereby ascribing a central importance to that issue. With regards to the Rumford Act, a full repeal bill passed the California State Senate with support from every Republican member. The 1964 initiative repealing the Rumford Act had passed with 65 percent of the vote, an ev
en higher share than Reagan had received in the much more pro-Republican election of 1966. Supporting full repeal would have been the politically easy thing to do. The fact Reagan chose not to do so after meeting with black leaders suggests he acted on principle, not calculation.

  Steffgen continued his crusade against Reagan for years, and in 1978 Reagan wrote a short letter responding to his charges.36 He rejected Steffgen’s claims that he had supported “back door socialism,” citing the tax rebates he had returned to California taxpayers and his opposition to forced busing and the Equal Rights Amendment. Reagan also said he had opposed abortion on demand and socialized medicine. Steffgen, he wrote, was “an unmitigated liar.”

  Reagan may have wished that were so, but the real issue between them was a difference in principle over what conservatism was. Reagan always backed Medi-Cal and never considered it to be “socialized medicine”; Steffgen did. Reagan opposed abortion on demand but did sign—after considerable mental anguish—a bill that significantly liberalized California’s abortion laws in a way that made abortion available in almost all circumstances.37 Reagan defended himself against Steffgen’s later charge that he had surreptitiously backed Nelson Rockefeller over Goldwater in 1964, but never responded to the charge that he had appointed Rockefeller backers to high positions in his government. He couldn’t respond to that charge because he had, intentionally. It was part of Reagan’s desire to unify a badly fractured party, a desire he had repeatedly told Republicans and conservatives he supported. Indeed, he even told the CRA in 1967 that he believed in party unity and that conservative primary challengers should not attack their more liberal opponents by name.38 Reagan had always been clear that his vision of government did not involve a significant repeal of many post–New Deal, liberal-enacted programs; Steffgen’s brand of conservatism believed that was the whole point.

  The difference between the two men can be summed up with one Reagan quote. For Steffgen, Reagan’s statement that “my views haven’t changed much since I was a Democrat” was proof that he was a conservative in name only.39 For Reagan, it was a badge of honor.

  Reagan’s ongoing political success, both in California and nationally, demonstrates that conservative voters were not as committed to repealing the New Deal or opposing civil rights as many of their leaders had supposed. In practice, they supported many of the same ideals that the working-class Democrats who backed Reagan wanted: support for traditional American values, economy in government, services that helped them get ahead in life, and opposition to communism at home and abroad. Reagan’s budgetary record showed his commitment to two of these ideals; his actions in regard to university unrest and the Vietnam War demonstrated his commitment to the other two.

  Modern campus unrest began at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964. The so-called free speech movement ushered in an ongoing series of student protests about civil rights, the Vietnam War, and other concerns of the Left. By 1966 the protests had grown to the point that the campus was embroiled in conflict, sometimes leading to the cancellation of classes. Reagan decried this, arguing that students’ right to protest did not mean they could do so in violation of university rules that harmed the right of other students to attend class without interruption. His audiences cheered, and Reagan had his first genuinely original populist issue.

  Reagan never wavered in his policy that campus order should be maintained no matter what the cause the students were protesting. He supported university presidents who maintained order and even showed physical courage on some occasions, walking through or addressing groups of hostile students without the cordon of security agents we have now come to expect surround public officials.40 He made clear that he would not hesitate to call out the National Guard when necessary to maintain order, on campuses or in the face of urban riots. Critics on the left denounced him for these actions, but Californians loved them.

  Reagan also delighted conservative audiences with his vocal support for American involvement in the Vietnam War. He followed the private advice of the former World War II hero and president Dwight Eisenhower and argued that America needed to fight the war more aggressively. Like Ike, he favored more extensive bombing of North Vietnam and pursuit of Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops into neighboring countries and into North Vietnam itself, tactics the Johnson administration refused to employ on the grounds they could “expand” the war.41

  Reagan’s support of the Vietnam War was on full display in an hour-long televised appearance with Robert F. Kennedy, a US senator and potential Democratic presidential candidate. The CBS news program, Town Meeting of the World, aired May 15, 1967, and featured students from numerous countries attending university in England posing questions to the two men on live television.42 Reagan looked assured, ruggedly handsome, and—speaking without cue cards or notes—in command of his facts and his opinions. He stoutly defended American involvement and aims in Vietnam in the face of consistently hostile questioning. At one point he even corrected one of the questioners’ facts, proceeding to run through the entire history of the fight between North and South Vietnam with pinpoint accuracy. RFK privately fumed to his staff afterward that he had been soundly defeated by Reagan; millions of conservatives and working-class Americans found yet another reason to see Reagan’s career progress onward.43

  Reagan’s support for South Vietnam was no surprise. He had long been a consistent and vocal anti-Communist. Indeed, anything short of a vehement endorsement of the war would have been cause for alarm on the right. But Reagan also offered a short clue as to his unconventional conservatism during the broadcast. At the end of his long correction of the errant student, he said, “You might be surprised to learn that I support Diem’s land reforms.”44 Those reforms, initiated during the Eisenhower administration by the first South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem, involved the government’s confiscation of land owned by wealthy Vietnamese, with compensation, and turning it over to formerly landless peasants to own and farm. American advisers had urged Diem to embark on this program so as to give the poor an economic stake in South Vietnam and thus reduce their potential support for Communist infiltrators and agents.

  Reagan had argued for the New Deal after World War II in part to prevent economic misery from causing people to consider supporting fascists or Communists. Twenty years later, his support for Vietnamese land reform showed he had not changed his views. For Reagan, government action in violation of established property rights was always acceptable if doing so gave average people a chance to live lives of their own choosing and made democracies more stable.

  Hard-line conservatives, however, would always hold a contrary view. During Reagan’s first term, North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, initially a staunch ally of the president’s, openly opposed administration policy with regards to fighting a Communist insurgency in El Salvador. The reason: Reagan backed a Christian Democrat, Jose Napoleon Duarte, who had initiated land reform. Saying Duarte was “far to the left of George McGovern,” the ultraliberal Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, Helms chastised Reagan for refusing to point out “that land reform is a vast failure” and continuing to support Duarte.45 Helms opposed Duarte for years, supporting Duarte’s right-wing rival, Roberto d’Aubuisson.46 D’Aubuisson and his ARENA party would frequently say Duarte was a watermelon: green (the Christian Democrats’ party color) on the outside and Communist red on the inside.47 Reagan had endured similar taunts from his brother and other Republicans during his liberal period; calling New Deal backers socialists or Communists was standard Republican rhetoric back then. Backing land reform as governor and as president shows just how loyal he remained to his principles throughout his life.

  Nineteen sixty-eight would prove to be one of the most consequential years in American history. It began with the Tet Offensive, a surprise attack by the guerrilla Vietcong in major cities throughout the South. Although the American army and its Vietnamese allies ultimately decisively beat the Vietcong, the fact that the offensive happened at a
time when the American public was being told the war was well in hand was shocking. The Johnson administration’s resultant “credibility gap” fueled the presidential challenge of antiwar senator Eugene McCarthy. His shockingly close second-place finish in the New Hampshire Democratic primary convinced Johnson to abandon reelection. In April, the civil rights leader and icon Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and in June Robert F. Kennedy was also assassinated on the eve of what appeared to be a decisive victory over McCarthy in the California Democratic primary. King’s murder triggered riots in over 120 cities (but not, Reagan proudly noted, in California). Antiwar protests grew in intensity, and when the Democrats met in Chicago to nominate the incumbent vice president, Hubert Humphrey, tempers boiled over. Young protesters known as Yippies were teargassed and beaten on national television as Chicago police officers overreacted in the muggy summer weather. Similar student protests broke out in France, and the free world watched impotently as Russian tanks brutally suppressed young Czechs’ effort to build “socialism with a human face” in their country. Rarely have Americans felt so pessimistic about the country’s future.

  Reagan’s 1968 was less catastrophic, but in the long run was equally consequential. Despite his denials, he was engaged in a stealth run for the Republican nomination. He traveled the country giving speeches, wowing conservative and establishment audiences alike. Under the rules then in place, however, this enthusiasm could not translate into delegates. Most state delegations to the Republican National Convention would be selected by party bosses and leaders. Many of them, especially in the South, were conservatives, but more than anything else they wanted to win. They lined up behind former vice president Richard Nixon, who had risen from the political dead after his crushing 1962 gubernatorial defeat to become the prohibitive favorite.