Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   7/29/2014

Jefferson critics; right’s rise

It was with some bemusement that I read (prior to finding ourselves camped where there is no Internet—really, none!) online letters and columns over the votes by residents and supervisors in favor of the State of Jefferson declaration (I support it). I would only point out that (as of July 17) the opponents’ letters tended to pile up attitude, insults, derision and a general loose use of supposed facts. Before the vote in June, opponents knew they had the short end of the public opinion stick, mostly couldn’t bother themselves to take in the numerous informational meetings, and thereafter resorted to nearly hysterical doom-and-gloom mongering when they weren’t denigrating the character of Jefferson supporters. The other 3 columnists have all been opposed, and predictably fail to reflect the predominant political leanings of Tehama County’s voters.

When voters overwhelmingly (57%) favored the Jefferson declaration (if Obama’s 53% constituted a “mandate” then Tehama County’s 57% qualifies as “overwhelming,” in my opinion), the opponents took to belittling and explaining away the numbers. There’s nothing to explain—our voters usually split heavily for Republicans and for issues like traditional marriage. The public employee/union sector is a primary source of votes for Democrats, gay marriage, tax increases and so on, so it can be assumed that the anti-Jefferson votes were stoked by those reliable Democratic voters opposed to upsetting the union-dominated political establishment dictated by Sacramento.

Del Norte County’s vote against the State of Jefferson is likewise easily explained by the large numbers of state workers in the Pelican Bay correctional facility. All of these groups know that if there are no state employee unions, the salaries, benefits and wages for public employees and public construction will reflect local market rates, not Sacramento’s bloated costs. They think the private sector taxpayers should just shut up and pay up for excessive compensation.

I knew that the Supervisors would have to summon the courage to vote in the face of the Democrat-dominated government and union sector—a tail seeking to wag the dog of local opinion. Congratulations, Supervisors, for a unanimous stand for our rightful need to control more of our own affairs. Naysayers, there are rural-dominant states, run by Republicans, that have better economies, lower unemployment, more folks providing for themselves and less dependency on “guv’mint” handouts. I guess the ideologically blinded will not see what they don’t wish to see.

Upon reading “The Rise of the Right” by William A. Rusher (1983), I found that many things haven’t changed. The subtitle, “An eye-opening, behind-the-scenes history of the conservative movement by one of its leading and most outspoken founders,” may seem irrelevant today; it did, in one respect, describe some of what we have witnessed over the Jefferson movement. When conservative thinkers, intellectuals and writers began to formulate beliefs, convictions and narratives in the late 1940s, culminating in publications and engagement with the prevailing liberal orthodoxy in the 1950s, derision, dismissal and name-calling were the left’s response—the same reaction they gave the Tea Party and the State of Jefferson.

Efforts then and now to strangle conservative movements in the cradle fell short for the simple reason that Americans self-identify as conservatives by 35 to 40 percent, compared to, at most, 20 percent for liberals. When presented with articulate conservative arguments and solutions, most voters will support such advocates. Absent same, those voters will stay home (2012 presidential election) or be taken in by verbally glib, personally glittering, even demagogue-like candidates (Obama in 2008 and 2012).

Most readers either appeared on the scene long after the 50s and 60s, or were, like Barbara and me, children knowing only that parents supported someone named Barry Goldwater but not much else. Because of the landslide defeat (Senator Goldwater won a handful of states and about 40 percent of the vote), Democrats gloated; the Eastern establishment Republicans— who had consistently nominated losers like Wilkie and Dewey and preferred the Rockefeller name to all others—took smug satisfaction in conservatism’s supposed repudiation (many even voted for Democrat Johnson).

Hence, eastern Republicans favored (squishy Republican) Nixon over Reagan, giving America the Nixon impeachment/resignation and Carter’s miserable tenure. So how did voters rise up in their conservative numbers to give Reagan two landslide victories? First, Americans had already voted by 57 percent (total of Nixon/Wallace votes) to repudiate the liberal Democrat McGovern. However, from the “Draft Goldwater” movement to the organizing and contributors that put Goldwater on the ticket, the conservative cause had made tremendous strides. Just before the assassination of President Kennedy, Time magazine looked at Kennedy’s fading allure and the strong polling for Goldwater and concluded it could go to the conservative Republican.

Rusher summarized the reasons for Johnson’s win: 1) sympathy for the deceased Kennedy carried over into a reluctance to change parties in “mid-stream”; 2) Johnson’s rural, southern image undercut the contrast that had been Goldwater’s strong suite against the eastern liberal Kennedy; 3) While some of Goldwater’s personae and statements were used mercilessly by the news media and Democrats to paint a caricature of him, that didn’t prove that conservatism was Goldwater’s undoing. The right was rising through it all.