If Democrats and Republicans agree on anything, it's that the other side is radical. Each party looks at the other and sees people driven by a dangerous ideology that would prove disastrous were it to be realized.
There may be no precise measure of radicalism that everyone can agree on, but there are a few clear markers. Radical ideas are, when introduced, usually supported by only a small minority of people. They propose to fundamentally alter things, not by making adjustments to the existing order but by transforming it. They would affect large numbers of people, if not everyone, and do so in profound ways. Radical ideas can be wise or foolish, and of course, they're a moving target; today's radical idea becomes tomorrow's mainstream position, or vice versa.
The current Republican Party has embraced radicalism in full, adopting goals that just a few years ago many in their own party would have found shocking. A longtime GOP congressional staffer wrote last week upon retiring that his party is now "full of lunatics" and is "becoming more like an apocalyptic cult" than an ordinary political party. Even as the Tea Party wanes, the GOP is taking its radicalism to new heights.
But before we see how, it is critical to understand that Republicans view their own new boldness not as an unleashing of their collective id but as an entirely sensible reaction to what they believe is the radicalism of the left.
Listen to the Republican critique of Barack Obama, and you'd think that Che Guevara snuck into the White House while no one was looking, then quickly nationalized the steel industry and herded millions of Americans onto collective farms. Democrats look at Obama and see a centrist who fetishizes conciliation to the point of capitulation, winning a few liberal victories here and there but largely accommodating himself to the status quo and knuckling under to Republican bullying. Republicans, on the other hand, look at him and see a maniacal socialist, schooled by 1960s radicals and bent on destroying America. Newt Gingrich calls him "the most radical president in American history." Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour agrees that Obama is "the most left-wing" president we've ever had. A National Review writer pens a book called Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. The message is always the same: This president and his policies are not merely wrong; they have fundamentally and disastrously transformed the country, and those changes must be undone.
Part of this is the natural gamesmanship of politics. Just as the National Rifle Association tells gun owners they are moments away from jackbooted government thugs crashing through their doors to confiscate their arsenals, political parties keep their bases excited (and voting and donating) by weaving tales of looming apocalypse. But the natural disposition of conservatism makes these appeals both more likely and more readily accepted.
Conservatism has long been presented by its advocates as a reaction against radicalism. Where radicals want to dismantle institutions and upend tradition, conservatives want to conserve the tried and true, moving carefully to keep chaotic change at bay. If radical change threatens, conservatives want to forestall it; once it has taken place, conservatives seek to restore the old order. As political scientist Corey Robin puts it, "Conservatism, strange as it may sound, is the voice of the dispossessed: the aristocrats, masters, employers, whites, and husbands who've had their power taken away from them and want it back."
The rhetoric of the right today is, as usual, interwoven with narratives about the superiority of the past. John Boehner, for instance, recently cried that Democrats "are snuffing out the America that I grew up in." This is an old story -- Ronald Reagan built much of his political persona on nostalgia for the 1950s (at least as it was remembered from television). But there is now a more concrete debate taking place on the right: Just how far should we turn back the clock?
For a start, nearly all of today's Republicans would like to undo the Great Society of the 1960s. Medicare, food stamps, programs to help black people and poor people -- all those were opposed by conservatives when they were enacted, and Republicans would gladly toss them in history's dustbin. But perhaps that isn't enough -- should we continue on to dismantle the New Deal of the 1930s? As long as we're driving a stake through Keynesian economics (cutting government spending in a time of economic crisis seems to be working out so well), perhaps we can revisit the long-suppressed desire to do away with Social Security and the ability of Congress to meaningfully regulate commerce. But for some, even that may not be enough. A few bold visionaries want to go for broke and roll back even the Progressive Era of the 1910s. Labor laws, any limits on the behavior of corporations, even the federal income tax itself -- all should be on the chopping block.
In the run-up to the Iraq War, a British official describing the neoconservative outlook told Newsweek, "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." Today, any Republican can advocate repealing the Affordable Care Act. Real conservatives want to repeal the 17th Amendment.
That's conservative radicalism -- not simply dramatic transformation but dramatic transformation that seeks to revert to a prior era, particularly one in which power relations were more to their liking. The current Republican front-runner, Texas Governor Rick Perry, is in these terms the most radical of the leading candidates. As he made clear in his book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington and in subsequent comments, Perry would for all intents and purposes like to repeal the entire 20th century. Social Security, he says, is a "Ponzi scheme" and a "monstrous lie" to younger workers that "violently toss[ed] aside any respect for our founding principles of federalism and limited government." The establishment of the income tax represented "the first step on the road to serfdom." U.S. senators, instead of being elected, should be appointed by state legislators. The last -- that's the 17th Amendment, by the way -- seems to be an affront to the true America for little reason other than that it was enacted during the Progressive Era.
Perry is not some colorful, inconsequential backbench congressional nutball (of which his party has more than its share). He's the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, and he could well be president a year and a half from now. Even if that were to happen, he wouldn't succeed in his effort to undo all the social and political progress of the last few decades and restore America to the glory that was the 19th century. There are some radical changes that the public just won't tolerate. But Perry could well win the argument within his party and take this radicalism from a stance of opposition to a governing philosophy. The GOP's already well on its way.
