Nixon understood that the conservative silent majority likes its politicians moderate
There’s evidence that the old Reagan coalition is back in play. In May, the people of North Carolina voted by a landslide to outlaw all forms of same sex partnership; this week, the people of Wisconsin voted to keep their budget-balancing, tax-cutting governor by a margin of seven points. In both cases, polling put these votes much closer than they turned out to be. If America is moving to the Right, its citizens are bashful about admitting so to pollsters.
North Carolina and Wisconsin represent the two poles of the Reaganite axis. North Carolina’s vote showed the lingering influence of evangelicals and religious conservatives, bolstered by the logistical and intellectual support of the Roman Catholic Church. Considering that its opponents have voted down gay marriage in every state upon which there has been a referendum, we can only conclude that the coalition is stronger than it has been for quite a while. The late 1970s (the period most closely associated with evangelical revivalism) actually saw a significant defeat for anti-gay rights in California (the Briggs Initiative of 1978). Not so this time around. Indeed, Gallup says that the nation is more opposed to abortion than ever before.
On the other hand, Wisconsin demonstrates that economic conservatism still has a hold on the mind of mid-westerners. Again, the Tea Party finds an ancestor in the tax revolts of the late 1970s, when residents in California and Massachusetts voted to cut property taxes even at the cost of slashing public services. It was the combination of tax revolt and cultural reaction against the excesses of the 1960s that helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980. If the late 1970s is a template for Republican electoral success, then Mitt Romney is well placed for a landslide.
There’s been some talk of this cycle reflecting the reawakening of that paradoxical group called “the silent majority” (paradoxical because, despite their famed silence, they never seem to shut up). Stepping back in time, the phrase finds its origins not in the Reagan moment of the late 1970s but in the Nixon administration of 1968-1974. Having promised “peace with honour” in Vietnam, Nixon in 1969 was now grinding through a stalemate and antiwar protests were back with a vengeance. In a televised speech, he laid out his plan for peace and concluded, “And so tonight – to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans – I ask for your support.”
Media coverage dismissed his Vietnam strategy as more of the same, but was intrigued by the idea that the President was no longer addressing the Americans as one people but instead as a nation divided between the decent middle and the radical extremes. The rhetorical device influenced policy to the extent that some within the administration began relentlessly to pursue “wedge issues” that could fashion an electoral majority out of opposition to the exploits of an (often disenfranchised) minority. “Split the country in two and we’ll take the bigger half,” as White House advisor Pat Buchanan put it. Future Republican strategists took the message to heart. So have some Democrats.
For Nixon, however, imagining the silent majority was a more complex matter. Historians have seized on memos by administration folks like Buchanan because they make for a good story and conform to the narrative of Nixon as a crude populist. But, in fact, other members of the administration urged a moderate line. The silent majority was neither Left nor Right, but firmly in the centre. It was to be mobilised, Nixon believed, by cool words rather than hot slogans. He saw himself as steering the nation between the Leftist utopianism of George McGovern and the Right-wing reaction of George C Wallace. The one time when he experimented with partisan conservatism – the 1970 midterms – was a disappointment. From that point on, the ideas of Pat Buchanan and the White House conservatives were sidelined. Nixon the moderate opened up relations with China, imposed price-wage controls, expanded the Environmental Protection Agency and embraced Keynesianism. He believed that he had a responsibility to put the Civil Rights reforms back on a stable, consensus-driven course. Yes, he vetoed bussing, but he also introduced affirmative action into federal contracts.
Nixon’s 1972 landslide re-election was not won on a Right-wing platform (Buchanan wrote after that it left the administration with no particular agenda at all) even if it did exploit Right-wing sentiments. He was proud of the fact that he received union endorsements and had a big group of Democrats for Nixon. He flirted with abolishing the Republican Party and establishing a new movement that he called conservative but was really Christian Democrat in the European tradition. Nixon guessed rightly that while the silent majority was centre-Right, it was also nervous of heated rhetoric from any quarter. Ronald Reagan recognised that in 1980 by avoiding bold statements on conservative issues and doing his best to appear loveable and fatherly. For an example of his centrist PR, here he is 1980 extolling the virtues of trade unions. Don’t tell Scott Walker.
Historically, there always has been a silent majority. Sometimes, it gets angry and delivers some surprising results but its tone is typically moderate and cautious. That’s what voters will be expecting in November. Fortunately for the GOP, the Republicans have the right man for the Right moment. The Tea Party has whipped the silent majority up, but it’s Mitt Romney who will express its anger in the moderate, sugar-coated way that it likes. He’s the Richard Nixon of our times.