by the populist-conservative volatility of “Middle-American Radicals,” it is being simultaneously undercut on the other hand by the opposite cultural tendency. One can almost see the basis of a major new antagonism that could help to disrupt the current party system: “double-knit” populist conservative fundamentalists versus what some politicians refer to as “wine-and-cheese” neoliberals. The Republican-Democrat system, with its roots in the social and economic patterns of the Civil War period, may be unable to encompass these new alignments. So if the populist “conservatives” represent, as I think they do, a 20 to 25 percent slice of the electorate, with a heavy geographic bias to the Sun Belt, the Farm Belt, and the Rocky Mountains (not all that different, by the way, from the earlier populist geography of William Jennings Bryan), the distribution of the splinter vote for the new liberal parties and candidacies of 1980 is also fascinating. Taken together, John Anderson and the Libertarian and Citizens Party nominees drew roughly 8 percent of the national vote two years ago, but that number spans a broad regional disparity. Across the heart of Dixie, from the Carolina lowlands to the West Texas Bible Belt, these three candidacies had very little support — no more than 1 to 2 percent. But from Down East Maine and Cape Cod to the Pacific Northwest, with major intermediate concentrations in Midwest university towns and the new high-tech industrial suburbs of Minneapolis, Denver, Tucson, and Albuquerque, the three campaigns drew a respectable 10 to 20 percent of the presidential vote. Even more significant, there was a strong correlation between splinterparty voting in post-industrial areas and concentration of high incomes and advanced education (to say nothing of the trite but very real correlation with passive solar houses, ski resorts, Volvos, and graduate students). In 1984, the three dissenting elements together — assuming Anderson runs — could attract 10 to 15 percent of the total U.S. presidential vote. The splinter-party tendencies of U.S. presidential politics are always worth taking seriously. They have often served to predict the change that takes place when at least one of the major parties shifts ground to embrace a new pivotal theme or constituency. An important exception to this pattern occurred in the years before the Civil War, when the abolitionist movement and the Free-Soil splinter party foreshadowed a new, dominant party based on shared ideas and regional interests — the Republican Party. Intriguingly, the 1980 Anderson campaign was the first time since that upheaval in which a splinter party made an impressive showing in the most affluent, best-educated, and most technologically advanced sections of the country. Something important is taking shape, and Reagan- ism may fuel its emergence by spurring further moderate GOP breakaways. Though positions on economic policy are still evolving on both sides, the Dixie and New Right fundamentalists and the post-industrial neoliberal vote are polar opposites on most issues — certainly on religious, environmental, civil libertarian, and military and foreign policy matters. To underscore the larger significance of post-industrialism, we are seeing the emergence or growth of splinter parties in other countries: the Social Democratic/Liberal alliance in Britain, the Free Democrats in West Germany, the Greens in Germany and Belgium, and the New Democratic Party in Canada. All draw heavily on university communities, environmentalists, and middle-class professionals, people whose cultural and economic attitudes are often at odds with those of blue-collar workers, union leaders, or old-style politicians like U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill (whom one politician has called a “paleo-liberal”). The trend to a populist lower- middle-class conservatism — a conservatism that may not be conservative at all — is also increasingly apparent elsewhere in the West — in the British conservatism of Margaret Thatcher, the French Gaullism of Jacques Chirac, the German Christian Democratic Party wing run by Franz- Josef Strauss, and the militant populist-religious nationalism of Israel’s Menachem Begin. In sum, the influence of both “Old Right” establish- mentarian conservatism and paleoliberalism has been on the wane. Despite the weakness of Reaganomics and the instability of the Reagan coalition, the basic geopolitical tilt of the United States — toward the ever-expanding Sun Belt — still favors the right. Hitherto, the populist movements of the South and the West have generally been a force for innovation, progress, and reform, however much their manners and methods might have elicited sneers in New York and Boston drawing rooms. There are some who claim we are witnessing a re-enactment of the same historical pattern today. Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan’s polling expert, has described the Sun Belt as the seat of national optimism, and assumes there is a strong correlation between optimism and support of Reagan’s programs. The San Diego Union has published editorials about a Sun Belt-centered “America II emerging from the diminished promise of America I.” In the eyes of such enthusiasts, this “America II” is a frontier of national renewal — of innovation and restored entrepreneur- ialism and self-help. Such a new frontier could make populism work again as an innovative and progressive force, or so the argument goes. Perhaps. But the Sun Belt is no longer an insurgent, even reformist, national periphery. The region is now the major axis of national power in an age in which high technology has long since replaced mining camps, cattle ranches, and cotton fields. The implications are less Jacksonian than they are Orwellian. Back in 1968, when I coined the term “Sun Belt,” my assessment of the region also took note of a new culture: The persons most drawn to the new sun culture are the pleasure-seekers, the bored, the ambitious, the space-age technicians and the retired — a super-slice of the rootless, socially mobile group known as the American middle class. Most of them have risen to such status only in the last generation, and their elected officials predictably embody a popular political impulse which deplores further social (minority group) upheaval and favors a consolidation of the last thirty years’ gains. Increasingly important throughout the nation, this new middle-class group is most powerful in the Sun Belt. Its politics are bound to cast a lengthening national shadow. This paragraph has stood the test of time. During the intervening years, however, the Sun Belt has gone from an idea and a developing trend to become perhaps the most powerful UNION AW. HAID COMPANY Punjab Tavern 6517 S.E. Foster Rd. 11 am to 2:30 am 774-7975 It starts out as a sandwich, and ends up as a meal. 429 N.E. UNION CARL DURBIN 234-8468 PROMISES OF GOOD TASTE EASYAS 123 mSTQNE COUPON PER POUND iAA .MHb Be a Punjabber! This ad worth one ten cent beer per customer THE COFFEE CELLAR OF MOUNT TABOR EASYAS 1 2 3 o This coupon is worth one dollar discount on one lb. of coffee or tea for as long as our store endures. £ The coffee cellar S.W. SECOND AT STARK PORTLAND, OREGON 223-7299 THE ALTERNATIVE PLACE TO EAT IN THE CASEMENT OF THE MONTGOMERY BUILDING 5W 10TH & MONTGOMERY SERVING BREAKFAST & LUNCH SUMMER HOURS 8-4 M-F DeNicolas' Restaurants Mrs. DeNicola and her family invite you to the DeNicolas' Restaurants. The DeNicolas prepare each entree with fine ingredients. . .from recipes they brought with them from Italy. They serve the kind of Italian food you've been looking for. "Mt. Tabor's Best Kept Secret" 6018 S.E. Stark 232-0877 DENICOLAS' 234-2600 3520 SE POWELL DENICOLAS' WEST 638-8428 18791 SW MARTINAZZI TUALATIN 20 Clinton St. Quarterly
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz