A woman holds a pro-Trump poster as she passes a rally at Harbor Blvd. and Katella Ave. in Anaheim, CA on Friday, September 29,2023. Trump, along with other Republican candidates, were speaking at the California GOP convention at the Anaheim Marriott. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
It was right here — in the shadow of Disneyland, near Richard Nixon’s birthplace and the Newport Beach Pier — that the Republican Party began its dramatic march to the right.
It’s what gave America President Ronald Reagan. And the Tea Party. Ballot measures denying social services to undocumented immigrants and banning same-sex marriage. The hard-right flank in Congress eager “to burn the whole place down” and, perhaps, the first candidate of any party to be the leading presidential nominee who also faces 91 felony counts, threatens judges and suggested that a four-star general’s actions were “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
You’re welcome, America?
As the California GOP convention got underway near the happiest place on earth Friday, and Donald Trump devotees faced off bitterly with Donald Trump demonizers in the streets of Anaheim, and the federal government poised for a shutdown, we turned for some perspective on how we got here to “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right,” by Harvard historian Lisa McGirr.
McGirr chronicled the New Right’s rise from Orange County to the state to the nation, “from ‘nut country’ to political vanguard…. from a virulent anticommunist, anti-establishment fringe to a broad national movement nourished by evangelical Protestantism.”
These “Suburban Warriors” were women hosting coffee klatches for Barry Goldwater in their tract houses, members of anticommunist reading groups organizing against sex education, pro-life Democrats who couldn’t stay with a pro-choice party, she writes. They were new arrivals working for defense contractors and worshipping in the region’s evangelical churches. They were successful entrepreneurs who forged political and social philosophies anchored in nationalism, Christian fundamentalism and western libertarianism.
With like-minded suburbanites in the South, these suburban warriors transformed the party “from sleepy Eisenhower Republicanism into a radical force bent on reversing the liberalism of John F. Kennedy and (Lyndon) Johnson, while rolling back global communism,” an editorial writer for these newspapers once wrote.
If the seeds of this movement have germinated beyond all control — into a carnivorous Audrey II from “Little Shop of Horrors,” eating traditional Republicanism alive, if you will — some of the movement’s movers and shakers are sanguine, laser-focused on what they see as the policy triumphs of the Trump era, predicting brighter days ahead for limited government and personal freedom.
Hate?
Others have decamped.
“I left the Republican party a long time ago. Hate and my political philosophy don’t go together, but that is where the GOP went so I left,” said Adam Probolsky, president of Probolsky Research, a prominent pollster who has worked on statewide campaigns. “I am a No Party Preference voter and my company has been non-partisan for more than a decade.
“That said, Trump is the worst thing that has ever happened to the United States in the last 100 years, and his return to the White House, which I deem to be likelier than not, would continue the damage in irreparable ways.”
But even some folks who don’t much like the man admire the policies he put in place. It complicates things.
James V. Lacy, an attorney who served as a general counsel in the Reagan Administration, is among them. “I can say with clarity that I saw even more breathtaking policy achievements under Trump than under my hero, Ronald Reagan. But while I was an early supporter and delegate of Trump in 2016, the post-2020 election denial and events of Jan. 6, 2021 have soured me on him, along with what Mike Pence calls the ‘crackpot lawyers’ who I think advised him badly. I am now a donor to Ron DeSantis.”
But Lacy’s not kidding himself. “The fact is, Trump is winning in the California GOP polls and I do not see another candidate overcoming that advantage,” he said. “This means he will sweep all 169 California delegates to the convention and by Super Tuesday will basically put the Republican nomination away.” If that happens and Trump wins, “we might have four better years than we would under the Democrats, and then the Constitution would prohibit Trump from an additional term. At least according to the consensus of non-crackpot constitutional lawyers.”
California the ATM
Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment was, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” and many take that to heart.
The California Republican Party enthusiastically accentuates the positive. “During his time as the nation’s 45th president, President Trump signed a major tax reform bill into law and oversaw a reduction of federal regulations,” it crowed in an email blast before Trump’s speech. “His protectionist trade policies included tariffs in foreign aluminum, steel, and other products. The Trump administration also renegotiated trade agreements with Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, and South Korea. Other domestic priorities included Supreme Court and federal judiciary appointments, increased military budgets, aggressive border and immigration control, criminal justice reform, and the reduction of prescription drug prices.
“In foreign policy, the Trump administration moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and brokered normalization agreements between Israel and a number of countries. In 2018, President Trump attended a summit with Kim Jong Un, marking the first time a sitting president met with a North Korean leader.”
Republicans may not hold any statewide offices in California, but the Golden State continues to be a dependable ATM for the Grand Old Party. Individuals have shoveled $7.4 million into Republican presidential candidate campaigns so far this election cycle; only Florida and Texas have raised more for Republicans, at $12 million and $7.6 million respectively, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Perhaps no single organization in California has been more instrumental on the money front than the Lincoln Club of Orange County, “Fighting to preserve the American way of life since 1962.” It’s the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in California, tracing its lineage back 60 years and including Arnold Beckman (scientific instruments), Walter Knott (a noted berry farmer), Richard Nixon (president) and John Wayne (movie star).
Its core values have always been limited government and more personal freedom, and even in the face of massive change — 47% of voters in California are registered Democrats, while only 24% are registered Republicans — long-time Lincoln Club members Buck Johns and Doy Henley see the pendulum swinging back.
There’s a “latent conservatism” in these parts that doesn’t exist elsewhere, they said. The Lincoln Club has about 400 members now, more than ever, and fights over what’s taught in public schools has re-energized individuals all over the state to reassert themselves.
“I think we’re going to have a real watershed year in ’24,” Johns said.
Henley agreed. “The future is pretty good. I think we’re going to win some races, get more people in the House, have a more considerate view of freedom and liberty.”
But …Trump?
The movers and shakers were quiet for a moment. “The problem is, his followers are strong,” Henley said. “They really responded to the most unusual guy to ever occupy the office.”
Trump lost in 2020, but he got 74 million votes, more than any other sitting president in history. “That’s something really distinctive,” Henley said.
Of course, Biden got 81 million votes and is president. But Trump could definitely become president again, the movers and shakers and many pundits agree.
“The cost of gas and food is off the charts, the mess with immigration at the border — this is definitely a winnable election” for Republicans, Johns said.
Back in October 2016, when Trump appeared to be trailing Hillary Clinton badly in polling, two seismic events happened on the same day. The “Access Hollywood” tapes dropped (“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump said), and the Wikileaks emails dropped (“I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy,” Clinton said).
“How are you enjoying this election?” I asked a former aide to California’s Republican governors as the partisans raged.
“I’m curled up under my desk in the fetal position with my thumb in my mouth,” he said.
It seemed crazy in 2016. It was crazier in 2020. And the prospect of 2024 election has many diving beneath their desks already. Now might be a good time to get the carpets professionally cleaned.
