The Orange Revolution - Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right - Review

Reason, Oct, 2001 by Brian Doherty

With support from the churches, the press, and grassroots groups, Orange County conservatives won control of the California Republican Assembly, an unofficial statewide body of GOP activists. Once in power, they endorsed the conservative Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater over moderate New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in the 1964 California presidential primary. Goldwater won California, and thus the Republican presidential nomination. From a contemporary perspective, it might seem unremarkable that a steadfast right-winger would win the GOP nomination, but in 1964, it was roughly the equivalent of Jesse Jackson winning the Democratic nomination today. Goldwater, of course, went on to be drubbed with unprecedented severity by Lyndon Johnson in the general election.

But his network of supporters in Souther California didn't give up or go away after that crushing defeat. McGirr tells how, bloodied but unbowed, they rallied behind Ronald Reagan and propelled him into California's state house in 1966. By electing Reagan governor-thereby putting him on the path to the White House-Orange County's right-wingers played a key role in what ultimately became a national political shift.

By the time Reagan became governor, however, the concerns of Orange County's right-wingers were themselves shifting. Dirty hippies were running amok at Berkeley, sex education was in the schools, and pornography was on sale at the corner newsstand. Blacks were rioting in Watts and domestic law-and-order issues seemed more pressing than an imminent invasion by the Russkies (though there were still those who blamed the commies for all of America's problems). The coalition that defined grassroots activism in Orange County started breaking apart. The businessmen-types especially opted out. With one of their own running the state, and with increased conservative power in the GOP, they no longer saw grassroots education or activism as their main concern. Directly petitioning or greasing the wheels of power was more of an option. But even as the Orange County coalition fell apart, a version of its conservatism went national. By 1980, that California right-wing nut Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United S tates.

As McGirr indicates, a fault line every bit as large and active as the San Andreas ran through the Orange County right. That fault line is more relevant than ever to the very broadly construed national coalition of libertarians and conservatives. It's the disjoint between the libertarian belief in unbridled freedom from a powerful state and the conservative belief in using state power to fight international communism or enforce traditional morality. The communism question is moribund; the morality question lives on and is a source of constant tension between libertarians and conservatives. Conservatives, for example, tend to crave state action to halt the availability of porn and "illicit" drugs; libertarians do not. A similar rift is growing over foreign and trade policy, too, with conservatives tending to favor military engagements (some are even calling to make China our adversary in a new Cold War) and withdrawing from commerce with "immoral" countries.