After Reagan, however, the GOP became thoroughly radicalized. Consider the 2004 platform of the Texas Republican Party, which gives an idea of what the party faithful really think: national platforms have to present at least an appearance of moderation, but in Texas Republicans can be Republicans. It calls for the elimination of federal agencies “including, but not limited to, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the position of Surgeon General; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Commerce, and Labor.” The platform also calls for the privatization of Social Security and the abolition of the minimum wage. In effect Texas Republicans want to repeal the New Deal completely.
In fact movement conservatives want to go even further, as illustrated by the campaign to end taxes on inherited wealth. The estate tax is an ancient institution, introduced in its modern form in 1916. It is the most progressive of federal taxes—that is, it falls more disproportionately on the wealthy than any other tax. In the late 1990s, before the Bush tax cuts, a mere 2 percent of decedents had estates large enough to face any tax at all. In terms of income, the richest 1 percent of the population paid almost two-thirds of the estate tax, and the richest 10 percent paid 96 percent of the taxes.[7]
Since only a handful of voters pay estate taxes, while many voters benefit from government programs the estate tax helps pay for, any party seeking to cater to median or typical voters would, you might think, be inclined to leave the estate tax alone. In fact, that’s what the Republican Party did for seventy years: Its last serious attempt to repeal the estate tax until recent years took place in 1925–26—and this attempt failed in large part because even some Republicans opposed repeal.[8] But in the 1990s the Republican Party once again began making estate tax repeal a priority. And the 2001 Bush tax cuts included a phaseout of the estate tax, with rates going down and exemptions going up, concluding with total elimination of the tax in 2010. In other words today’s Republican party is willing to go further than the Republican Party of the 1920s, the last, golden years of the Long Gilded Age, in cutting taxes on the wealthy.
Some movement conservatives are open about their desire to turn back the clock. Grover Norquist, the antitax advocate who has been described as the “field marshal” of the tax-cut drive, is best known for saying, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”[9] Even more revealing, however, is his statement that he wants to bring America back to “the McKinley era, absent the protectionism,” to the way America was “up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that.”[10]
The modern Republican Party, then, has been taken over by radicals, people who want to undo the twentieth century. There hasn’t been any corresponding radicalization of the Democratic Party, so the right-wing takeover of the GOP is the underlying cause of today’s bitter partisanship. There remains, however, the question of how movement conservatives managed to seize and keep control of one of America’s two major political parties.
The nature of the hold movement conservatism has on the Republican Party may be summed up very simply: Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy. That is, there is an interlocking set of institutions ultimately answering to a small group of people that collectively reward loyalists and punish dissenters. These institutions provide obedient politicians with the resources to win elections, safe havens in the event of defeat, and lucrative career opportunities after they leave office. They guarantee favorable news coverage to politicians who follow the party line, while harassing and undermining opponents. And they support a large standing army of party intellectuals and activists.
The world of right-wing think tanks, although it’s far from being the most important component of the “vast conspiracy,” offers a useful window into how the conspiracy works. Here are a few scenes from modern think tank life:
Item: Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and veteran of the Reagan administration, works at the National Center for Planning Analysis, a think tank that specializes in advocating privatization. NCPA’s financial support includes funding from twelve foundations, including Castle Rock, Earhart, JM, Koch, Bradley, Scaife, and Olin.[11] Disillusioned with George W. Bush’s policies, Bartlett writes Impostor, a book that accuses Bush of not being a true conservative. He is promptly fired from his think tank position.
Item: Sen. Rick Santorum, a hard-line conservative representing the relatively moderate state of Pennsylvania, is swept away in the 2006 midterm election. He promptly takes a job as director of the “America’s Enemies” program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an organization whose self-proclaimed mission is “to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues.” EPPC is supported by grants from eight foundations: Castle Rock, Earhart, Koch, Bradley, Smith Richardson, Olin, and two of the Scaife foundations.[12]
Item: The National Center for Public Policy Research is a think tank devoted to “providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems”—an activity that in recent years has mainly involved casting doubt on global warming. It made the news in 2004 when it was learned that NCPPR was helping Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist, launder funds: The think tank funneled $1 million to a fake direct-mail firm that shared Abramoff’s address. Why NCPPR? Since its founding in 1982, the organization has been headed by Amy Moritz Ridenour, an associate of Abramoff’s when he became president of the College Republicans in 1981. Ridenour’s husband is also on the payroll, with both being paid six-figure salaries. NCPPR receives funding from Castle Rock, Earhart, Scaife, Bradley, and Olin.[13]
There’s nothing on the left comparable to the right-wing think tank universe. The Washington Post has a regular feature called “Think Tank Town,” which “publishes columns submitted by 11 prominent think tanks.” Of the eleven institutions so honored, five are movement conservative organizations: the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and the Hudson Institute. Only one, the Center for American Progress, can really be considered an arm of the progressive movement—and it wasn’t founded until 2003. Other think tanks, like the Brookings Institution, although often described as “liberal,” are in reality vaguely centrist organizations without a fixed policy line. There are a few progressive think tanks other than CAP that play a significant role in policy debate, such as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. In terms of funding and manpower, however, these organizations are minnows compared with the movement conservative whales.
The proliferation of movement conservative think tanks since the 1970s means that it’s possible for a movement intellectual to make quite a good living by espousing certain positions. There’s a price to be paid—as Bruce Bartlett discovered, you’re expected to be an apparatchik, not an independent thinker—but many consider it a good deal.
To a very large extent these think tanks were conjured into existence by a handful of foundations created by wealthy families. The bigger think tanks, Heritage and AEI in particular, also receive large amounts of corporate money.
7.
Decedents, http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/ TaxFacts/TFDB/TFTemplate .cfm?Docid=52&Topic2id=60; distribution, http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/ TaxFacts/TFDB/TFTemplate. cfm?Docid=50&Topic2id=60.
8.
Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro,
9.
Robert Dreyfuss, “Grover Norquist: Field Marshal of the Bush Plan,”
12.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ethics_and_Public_Policy_ Center; http://www.epcc.org/news/ newsid.2818/news_detail.asp.
13.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Center_for_Public_ Policy_Research.