Toward the end of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee became so worried
about the morale of his troops that he appeared on the battlefield
several times, ready to lead his men into action. How did his
troops react? They surrounded his horse and forced him to the rear,
refusing to go into battle until they were sure he was out of
danger.
America was then — and was for most of its history — what
sociologists call a “deferential society.” People were willing to
follow a leader not of their own class. Lee was a Virginia
aristocrat married to Martha Washington’s great-granddaughter. He
was personally opposed to slavery, he backed his wife’s efforts to
set up an illegal school for African-Americans on his estate, and
he finally liberated the family’s own slaves in 1862. Yet Lee still
felt indebted to his Southern heritage. He had little in common
with the journeymen and backwoods farmers who made up his army, yet
they were more than willing to defer to his leadership, and it was
his military genius that kept them in the war for so long.
Deference to leaders who do not necessarily share your
background or agree with you on everything is in the fiber of
representative government. It is enshrined in the Constitution. In
fact, there probably never would have been a Constitution if the
Americans of 1787 hadn’t been willing to defer to the “assembly of
demigods” (as Jefferson described them) that convened in
Philadelphia, closed the doors to the press, sealed the windows to
eavesdroppers, and privately debated the future of the nation.
We now live in an age when people are less and less willing to
defer to leaders who are not of their own class and kind. Exhibit
No. 1 is the current rejection of Mitt Romney by Tea Party
Republicans and the subsequent elevation of Rick Santorum, a man
who has none of the qualities of temperament suitable to a
President, but who perfectly expresses the anger and sense
of exclusion that is fundamental to the Tea Party.
And of course Tea Party Republicans have plenty to be angry
about. They perceive, quite rightly, that they are the principal
victims of President Obama’s coalition of bureaucrats and
government-dependents that is slowly strangling this country.
Almost without exception, they are small-business owners,
independent professionals, heads of families, people of modest
means and backgrounds — just as Rick Santorum describes them. They
play by the rules and believe in the old America of effort and
opportunity, but they perceive — correctly — that the game is not
going to last much longer. With nearly half the population paying
no income taxes, with the unemployed languishing for two years on
government checks, with ranks of “disabled” swelling on Social
Security, with construction cranes dotting the Washington skyline,
and with congressmen holding seminars on how to apply for
government jobs, they know there is very little room in this
economy anymore for free enterprise. Their job — as President
Obama so eloquently explained to Joe the Plumber — is to “share
the wealth” they have earned through hard work and self-discipline,
so someone down the street with no job and four illegitimate
children can live on the dole. They are angry, and rightfully
so.
What they do not perceive is that they are no longer a majority
of the country. In fact, they are a minority of a minority — a
minority in the Republican Party, which is itself a minority party.
They may be furious as all hell, but the general public does not
share their anger. Most people are concerned with paying less taxes
and maybe getting a part-time job with the school district, so they
can get good benefits. If Tea Party Republicans succeed in
nominating Rick Santorum, it will be like when the Populists
nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896: a magnificent triumph for
a rump faction, but a disaster in the general election. Once
Santorum starts spouting about banning birth control and abolishing
public schools, he will be like those Populists who were suddenly
heard sprinkling their calls for free coinage of silver with
vegetarianism and mystical interpretations of the Bible — the
things that historian Richard Hofstadter said reflected “too many
long nights on the prairie.”
In his current best-seller, Coming Apart, Charles
Murray talks about how the liberal intelligentsia has isolated
itself from the rest of America, with its own cultural icons and
reference points that have little or no meaning to the mainstream.
That is true. Unfortunately, it is also true of the Tea Party. They
have a private vocabulary of Hayek and von Mises, rent-seeking and
marginal tax rates, “elitist” and “fungible,” that lights up the
neurons of fellow conservatives and libertarians but has little or
no meaning to the general public. Take home schooling. Santorum can
talk breezily about home schooling his children in the White House,
because as a 53-year-old autodidact, he thinks he knows everything.
But lots of people in this country — millions upon millions, in
fact — don’t think they know everything and want their
children taught by people who know more than they do. Granted, they
aren’t getting much of that in public schools these days, but that
doesn’t mean people aren’t willing to try. They see schools as
their children’s opportunity for advancement. If Santorum thinks
he’s going to form a majority out of home schoolers, he’s likely to
end up as the first candidate in history to lose all 50 states.
What the Tea Party needs to do is look for allies.
There are other people in the country who share their concerns, if
not their bitterness. Who are some of those natural allies? The
most obvious are people who have been successful in the private
sector but who have remained true to the system that made them.
They may have achieved wealth but they haven’t gone aristocratic,
become environmentalists, celebrated the “era of limits,” talked
about “sustainability,” decided that we’ve got enough wealth in
this country and the time has come to divide up what we already
have (excluding my part, of course), and settled down to live
gracefully on wind and sunshine.
In other words, a natural ally might be Mitt Romney, or someone
very like him.
When the alliance of labor unions, urban Catholics, and Southern
rednecks combined to take over this country in 1932, they didn’t do
it by nominating Huey Long or Al Smith for president. They did it
by choosing a Hudson River aristocrat who had so much blue blood in
his veins that he didn’t mind becoming a “traitor to his class” and
trashing a few Wall Street plutocrats along the way. They chose
someone outside of their class who was willing to speak for them,
yet someone prominent and successful enough to become a national
hero. And it worked. Cue John F. Kennedy in 1960 for the same
result.
Tea Party members seem unwilling to do the same. They don’t like
Mitt Romney because he is not “one of us.” He had a rich father and
went to Cranbrook and Harvard Business School. He lives in
Massachusetts and doesn’t feel revulsion while visiting an Ivy
League campus. He probably even reads the New York Times.
How can he possibly represent us? He doesn’t share our background,
our hatred of the press, our disdain for New York and
Washington.
What they don’t see is that Romney already is a traitor
to his class. He didn’t smoke marijuana at Harvard. He didn’t
participate in student demonstrations — he was married and raising
children, for heaven’s sake! He’s made lots of money, but he hasn’t
tried to deflect envy by joining the Sierra Club, hobnobbing with
movie stars or celebrating Occupy Wall Street. Romney has lived
among the liberal intelligentsia but never become part of it. He’s
a natural leader for those struggling independent Americans who
make up the Tea Party. Yet they refuse to see him that way.
No political movement or candidate has ever gotten anywhere in
this country without finding its natural allies. When Ronald Reagan
went to the 1976 GOP convention with a chance of stealing the
nomination, he took the bold step of naming an East Coast
Republican, Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, as his Vice
President. He knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere without uniting
the party. He reprised this in 1980 by choosing his strongest
rival, George Bush, the quintessential Connecticut Yankee. (Bush
later did the opposite by choosing a nonentity in Dan Quayle, and
it probably cost him the 1992 election.)
So ask yourself this: If Mitt Romney wins the nomination, do you
think he’ll pick Santorum or Marco Rubio or some other Tea Party
stalwart as his Vice President? I would bet the house on it. And if
Santorum is nominated, do you think he will choose Romney, or
Senators Richard Lugar or Lamar Alexander, as a stabilizing force
from the Old Guard? I wouldn’t count on it. And, if not, how can he
help from becoming the next Christine O’Donnell or Sharron
Angle?
