With Mikhail Gorbachev dying earlier in the week, Walter Isaacson wondered on Thursday’s Amanpour and Company on PBS, how the fall of the Soviet Union has impacted conservatism. To get his answer, he turned to author Nicole Hemmer who claimed that conservatives are attempting “to attract voters through racism.”
Hemmer’s thesis was that the demise of the Soviet Union eliminated the need for Reagan-like optimism and anti-communism and opened the door for bitter resentment, but Isaacson wasn’t so sure, “But I do remember there were a lot of dog whistles that Ronald Reagan did during his presidency, things that sort of verged on stoking up racial resentment, talking about welfare queens, that sort of thing. Was that to play to the hard-right or was that something that was in his nature?”
As much as it may pain Isaacson to admit it, Linda Taylor, was a real-life example of a welfare fraudster who had multiple aliases and who served jail time that Reagan mentioned in 1976. Yet, Hemmer conceded Isaacson had a point:
Well, it was definitely something to play to the hard-right. It was, you know, something that he did in his campaign. He went down to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been killed in the 1960s and gave a speech on states' rights. There were all of these ways that he was trying to appeal to, say, the people who voted for George Wallace in 1968 and 1972, the segregationist governor of Alabama. But it is important that Reagan felt he had to use a dog whistle rather than a bull horn to attract those voters. And that's what you see in the 1990s. You see politicians put down the dog whistle, pick up the bull horn, and make much more explicit racist appeals. So, some of the attempts to attract voters through racism, that was the same. It was just done in a very different way.
Later in the interview, Isaacson wondered, “Why did the Republican Party and the conservative movement skitter away from Ronald Reagan towards a new form of grievance and resentment? Was that because there was real grievances to be had?”
Hemmer made reference to the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service one, but also claimed conservatives are a bunch of racists and sexists:
The U.S. was becoming a much less white country. There were women were suddenly in the workforce and in high-powered jobs and all of that changed and all of that uncertainty really did open up a space that if you wanted to, instead of offering sort of the happy warrior conservatism of an earlier era, you could say, you know, things are bad and it's somebody else's fault and we’re going to find those people and hold them accountable and we are going to make them pay a price for you losing power in this country.
It is not uncommon to say that the Soviet Union’s collapse caused the GOP to undergo an identity crisis because it no longer had the communist threat to hold the national security hawks, free market advocates, and socially conservative traditionalists together. But, to say it led to the GOP embracing overt racism and sexism as a vote-getting strategy is simply partisan mudslinging.
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Here is a transcript for the September 1 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
9/1/2022
11:41 PM ET
WALTER ISAACSON: But I do remember there were a lot of dog whistles that Ronald Reagan did during his presidency, things that sort of verged on stoking up racial resentment, talking about welfare queens, that sort of thing. Was that to play to the hard-right or was that something that was in his nature?
NICOLE HEMMER: Well, it was definitely something to play to the hard-right. It was, you know, something that he did in his campaign. He went down to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been killed in the 1960s and gave a speech on states' rights. There were all of these ways that he was trying to appeal to, say, the people who voted for George Wallace in 1968 and 1972, the segregationist governor of Alabama. But it is important that Reagan felt he had to use a dog whistle rather than a bull horn to attract those voters. And that's what you see in the 1990s. You see politicians put down the dog whistle, pick up the bull horn, and make much more explicit racist appeals. So, some of the attempts to attract voters through racism, that was the same. It was just done in a very different way.
…
11:48 PM ET
ISAACSON: Let me drill down a little bit more on the basic theme of this book, which is to my question, why? Why did the Republican Party and the conservative movement skitter away from Ronald Reagan towards a new form of grievance and resentment? Was that because there was real grievances to be had?
HEMMER: There were real changes happening in the world in the 1990s. I mean, the end of the Cold War changed what geopolitics looked like, but on the ground that meant things like a deep recession in the early 1990s. It meant people who were working in manufacturing jobs were finding those jobs disappear as the U.S. moved to a service economy. And so there were these real changes alongside with changing demographics. The U.S. was becoming a much less white country. There were women were suddenly in the workforce and in high-powered jobs and all of that changed and all of that uncertainty really did open up a space that if you wanted to, instead of offering sort of the happy warrior conservatism of an earlier era, you could say, you know, things are bad and it's somebody else's fault and we’re going to find those people and hold them accountable and we are going to make them pay a price for you losing power in this country. And that form of politics, especially when mixed with those new media, had real power in the U.S.
