An Historical Perspective On Today's Political Divide (Long Attention Span Theatre)

Wilentz

(Excerpted from the 10/19/14 NY Times Book Review of Landslide -- LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America, by Jonathan Darman.  The review was written by Sean Wilentz, history professor at Princeton University.)
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In October 1964, following a long hot summer of riots in Northern cities, a Gallup poll found that 73% of Americans agreed that blacks should stop their protests "now that they have made their point."  But the rioting continued in 1965 and 1966, arising from local conflicts about the police, over which President Johnson had as little control as President Obama has had over the events in Ferguson, Mo.  Seized upon by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and others, white reaction to the disturbances, and the associated fear of urban crime, became for the Republicans the perfect weapon for blasting big government liberalism as the cause, not the solution, of the nation's problems.

Although they claim the mantle of Reaganism, today's conservative Republicans would have considered President Reagan -- who, after all, raised taxes no fewer than 11 times and tripled the deficit -- a crypto-liberal heretic, a RINO.