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<div class="timestamp">September 4, 2012</div>
<h1>G.O.P. Shift Moves Center Far to Right</h1>
<h6 class="byline">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/eduardo_porter/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by EDUARDO PORTER"><span>EDUARDO PORTER</span></a></span></h6>
<div id="articleBody">
<p>
To <a title="A related article about the election." href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/03/republican-convention-obama_n_1850846.html?utm_hp_ref=elections-2012">hear Republicans</a>
on the campaign trail, the United States could not have elected a more
left-wing president than Barack Obama, one more hostile to business or
more eager to expand government power. Left-wing Democrats, I’m sure,
would disagree. If they had their druthers, they would probably make a
more liberal, more pro-big government choice. Somebody, perhaps, like <a title="A Daily Kos piece comparing Nixon and Obama." href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/03/1013155/-Nixon-more-liberal-than-Obama">Richard Nixon</a>. </p>
<p>
That’s right. The Nixon administration not only supported the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/clean_air_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about the Clean Air Act." class="meta-classifier">Clean Air Act</a>
and affirmative action, it also gave us the Environmental Protection
Agency, one of the agencies the business community most detests, and the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration to police working
conditions. Herbert Stein, chief economic adviser during the
administrations of Nixon and Gerald Ford, once remarked: “Probably more
new regulation was imposed on the economy during the Nixon
administration than in any other presidency since the New Deal.” </p>
<p>
Nixon bolstered <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/social_security_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about Social Security." class="meta-classifier">Social Security</a> benefits. He introduced a minimum tax on the wealthy and championed a guaranteed minimum income for the poor. He even proposed <a title="A related piece about health care reform." href="http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2009/september/03/nixon-proposal.aspx">health reform</a>
that would require employers to buy health insurance for all their
employees and subsidize those who couldn’t afford it. That failed
because of Democratic opposition. Today, Republicans would probably
shoot it down. </p>
<p>
Historians might protest that it is crazy to brand Nixon a lefty. He was
rabidly anti-communist. If anything, they might argue, his seemingly
left-leaning policies underscore how uninterested he was in the economy
and how far he would go to buy popularity with public money. </p>
<p>
Still, Nixon’s initiatives would never pass muster in the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Republican Party" class="meta-org">Republican Party</a>
of today, focused as it is on cutting taxes and public spending. His
decisions not to try to undo big government programs passed by Lyndon
Johnson’s Democratic administration underscores how much the political
center has moved. </p>
<p>
The difference between then and now is that Nixon — like most mainstream
Republicans — accepted that government had a role to play guaranteeing
Americans’ economic well-being. That consensus cracked around the time
of Ronald Reagan’s inaugural speech in 1981. “Government is not the
solution to our problems, government is the problem,” the president <a title="A YouTube clip of Reagan’s speech." href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ixNPplo-SU">intoned</a>. And the country’s political center set off on a long rightward migration. </p>
<p>
Interestingly, Americans say their political ideology has changed little
since the late 1970s. The share of voters who defined themselves as
liberal was 20 percent in 2010, up slightly from 19 percent in 1980,
according to polls by The New York Times and CBS News. The conservative
share over the same time rose to 35 percent, from 30 percent. </p>
<p>
But these polls ignore how much the meanings of the terms have <a title="A related 1996 Times article.." href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/03/weekinreview/a-conservative-is-fill-in-the-blank.html">changed</a>. The rightward drift in economic thinking becomes apparent in surveys asking about specific issues. <a title="A related article about the surveys." href="http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/">In surveys</a>
25 years ago, 71 percent of Americans believed it was the government’s
job to take care of those who couldn’t care for themselves, according
the Pew Research Center. This year the share is down to 59 percent. And
most of the shift reflects a decline among Republicans. </p>
<p>
Republicans’ support for labor unions has fallen sharply since the late
1980s, according to Pew’s research, as has their support for protecting
the environment. Their drift fits the position of Congressional
Republicans, whose views on the economy have been <a title="A blog post on the conservative shift by Republicans in Congress." href="http://voteview.com/blog/?p=494">shifting</a>
right for the last quarter-century while Democrats’ views have remained
roughly still. And as Republicans have moved to the right, economic
policy has <a title="A YouTube clip of Bill Clinton’s statement on welfare reform." href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6QOuoqeOFQ">followed</a>. </p>
<p>
Consider what has happened to federal nonmilitary discretionary
spending, which pays for housing vouchers and veterans’ health, highway
maintenance and the Food and Drug Administration — essentially all the
domestic social programs that are not mandatory like Social Security, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about Medicare." class="meta-classifier">Medicare</a> or <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about Medicaid." class="meta-classifier">Medicaid</a>. </p>
<p>
When Nixon resigned from office in 1974, nonmilitary discretionary
spending amounted to about 4 percent of the nation’s economy — roughly
the same as at the end of the Johnson administration before him.
Discretionary spending expanded through the administrations of Gerald
Ford and Jimmy Carter, reaching a high in 1980 of 5.2 percent of the
nation’s gross output. Then the tide turned: by 2008, before the Great
Recession shrank the economy and the fiscal stimulus lifted spending,
nonmilitary discretionary spending had fallen to 3.6 percent of national
output. </p>
<p>
Conservatives will say their ideas won simply because they are better.
Social scientists have some alternative hypotheses of our great
conservative shift. </p>
<p>
The big government strategy from the 1940s through the 1970s produced a
spectacular improvement in living standards. But many economists now say
they believe the focus on full employment and income redistribution at
the expense of everything else also contributed to the strategy’s
demise, removing the fear of joblessness and encouraging excessive wage
increases. </p>
<p>
Combined with cheap money printed by the Federal Reserve, it produced a
burst of high inflation and high unemployment that bedeviled the 1970s —
discrediting government as an economic steward and letting a new belief
take hold: the economy should be left to the market, which always knows
best. The end of the cold war, which discredited central planning and
other left-wing economic theories, probably helped solidify this stance.
</p>
<p>
Economic philosophies could shift again, of course. Just as the big government policies of the New Deal emerged from <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/great_depression_1930s/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival news about the Great Depression." class="meta-classifier">the Great Depression</a> and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/world_war_ii_/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about Wold War II." class="meta-classifier">World War II</a>,
the financial crisis and recession just past might again persuade
Americans of the perils of unfettered capitalism and cause the pendulum
to swing back. </p>
<p>
Still, the scorched-earth debate over Obamacare underscores how
difficult it will be for the American political system to swallow a more
activist government than it has today. </p>
<p>
Those nostalgic for Johnson’s Great Society programs might remember that
they occurred in a kinder, gentler economy in which American companies
faced much less competition than they do today. Eastman Kodak could run a
mini-welfare state through much of the 20th century —with
profit-sharing, health benefits and pension plans — because it had fat
monopoly-type profits. Detroit’s Big Three amounted to a cozy oligopoly.
</p>
<p>
Globalization and its attendant burst of competition put an end to the
fairy tale. Companies squeezed costs to stay in the game, zeroing in on
wages and working conditions. <a title="Econiomic Scene column about unions’ decline" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/business/economy/unions-past-may-hold-key-to-their-future.html">Unions</a>, once politically powerful institutions fighting for workers’ share, became weaker and weaker. </p>
<p>
Half a century ago, American employers might have accepted a higher
minimum wage on the ground that they needed American consumers to be
able to afford their products. They might have supported public
education on the ground that they needed an educated American work
force. They might have accepted financial oversight because they raised
money from small investors in American markets. </p>
<p>
But globalization freed businesses from the limitations of one nation
and the clutches of the nation state. As businesses’ footprints extended
around the world, these objectives became less important than assuring
low taxes. Free to jump borders, businesses became much more difficult
to tax or regulate. And in the current dismal economy, they don’t seem
too eager for a return of the big government days. </p>
<p>
The United States is in ideological flux. The Great Recession has given us both the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about the Tea Party movement." class="meta-classifier">Tea Party</a>
and the Occupy Wall Street movement, and produced perhaps the most
polarized government of the modern era. Liberal-leaning Democrats, often
disappointed at the president’s compromises, will pine for a more
aggressive champion of workers’ rights. But they may want to count their
blessings. Americans today might not elect somebody <a title="Bruce Bartlett column compering Obama and Nixon." href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/07/22/Barack-Obama-The-Democrats-Richard-Nixon.aspx#page1">as liberal</a> as Richard Nixon. </p>
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