How did the GOP Go Wrong?
Part 2: Racism and the rise of the Christian Right
As we’ve seen, the breakthrough of the Republican Party was with Ronald Reagan, who found a way to appeal to appeal to Democrats who felt their party had abandoned them. This, repackaged as the “Contract with America,” consolodated Republican gains and defined what the party stood for. The Contract went our of its way to avoid issues that did not command a strong majority of American public opinion. At the same time, by focusing on smaller government at the expense of social justice, it smuggled race and class into the platform.
This wasn’t all that important, anyway. The point of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract” had less to do with governing than it did with establishing a brand.
His was not the only movement to do so. “Christian evangelism” came to be increasingly defined as White Christian nationalism. The national Democratic Party found it difficult to speak in these terms. Republicans learned that what works with this demographic: appeals to fear, often connected to race. By 1981, Republican operative Lee Atwater, who had moved from South Carolina to the…
