Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

Ronald Reagan resurrected many of Nixon’s strategies, “re-creating a nation based on the idea that some people are better than others” (58). In 1980, Reagan—with the help of Nixon advisors like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone—“spun the story of a ‘welfare queen’ [...] who lived large on benefits she stole” (59). Media again immortalized the image of the independent, patriarchal cowboy in the books and television series Little House on the Prairie, shaped by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s libertarian daughter to depict “Pa” as the traditional “benevolent patriarch” who morally led his home-bound, female-dominated family. 

This emphasis on traditionalism married Movement Conservatism to “right-wing religious groups” using the slogan “make America great again” (60-61), appealing to a pre-civil rights era. While terms such as “liberal media” initially meant “media that required fact-based argument” (61), this ideological shift politicized that designation. As Reagan grew less popular in the mid-1980s, the Federal Communications Committee appointed by Reagan ended the “Fairness Doctrine,” which necessitated radio media “to present information honestly and fairly” (63), enabling hosts like Rush Limbaugh, who attacked “‘feminazis,’ liberals, and Black Americans” (63). 

In 1990, Newt Gingrich’s Republican training organization GOPAC distributed a memo called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” which detailed the verbs, adjectives, and nouns Republicans should use to refer to Democrats. In a 1992 speech to the Republican National Convention, Pat Buchanan styled the opposition between parties as a “culture war” over the “struggle for the soul of America” (65). This rhetoric positioned the Republican base as a perceived “underclass” struggling to save the nation from those who threaten their “freedom.”

Bill Clinton’s win in 1992 further incentivized the Movement Conservative mission, introducing accusations of “voter fraud” to explain away Republican losses. None of the 1996 House and Senate investigations into voter fraud found evidence supporting the accusations, but Southern states like Florida purged voter rolls through the late 1990s, which influenced George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential victory over Al Gore. Subsequent civil rights investigations uncovered “an extraordinarily high and inexcusable level of disenfranchisement” masquerading as “voter fraud” (67).

This “shifting away from democracy” (68) was mirrored from the late 1980s onward in the realm of executive and judicial power. In 1986, then-lawyer Samuel Alito proposed a plan to make the president the “unitary executive” without “congressional oversight” (69). In the 1980s, Republicans elected judges who argued that the government cannot take any action “not explicitly written in the 1787 Constitution”: By definition, this eliminated many hallmarks of the liberal consensus. 

These shifts empowered the Reagan government’s “flirtation with authoritarianism through foreign affairs” (70), illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund the Contras, a right-wing group in Nicaragua, and shredding subpoenaed documentation. Democrats labeled this “secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law” (71), but Republicans questioned the patriotism of the investigation.

After September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush launched rocket attacks on the Taliban in Afghanistan. The 2002 Bush Doctrine determined that the United States would “preemptively strike nations suspected of planning attacks on the U.S.” (75). Due to the Iraq War’s unpopularity, the administration paralleled “supporting Republicans” with “defending the nation against Islamic terrorists” (75). They “manufactured information” to justify the invasion of Iraq. The increased executive power established over the previous decades enabled Bush to overturn Congress’s attempts to rein in the military of his executive power. One senior Bush advisor told journalist Ron Suskind that Suskind was operating in “the reality-based community” whereas Republicans “create [their] own reality” (77).

While 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain attempted to differentiate himself from the extreme wing of his party, his running mate Sarah Palin embraced and perpetuated popular populist, racist talking points, especially against their opposition, Barack Obama. She claimed he was “palling around with terrorists” (78), and right-wing news media fed into the “Birther conspiracy,” which purported that Obama was not a US citizen despite evidence to the contrary. In the wake of Obama’s election, some Republicans formed the “Tea Party,” which was “worried about socialism, voter fraud, and what they saw as an influx of Black and Brown people” (79). 

Redistricting and gerrymandering in 2012 further undermined democracy by using “pack” or “crack” methods to either inequitably bunch up or separate voters of certain demographics. Throughout Obama’s tenure, Republicans in Congress obstructed Democratic efforts to legislate and govern, which they saw as the best way to “destroy” Americans’ faith in the federal government. This collided with the longtime Republican incentive to stack the courts, culminating in Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to consider Obama’s moderate Supreme Court nominee.