\nTo drive home my frequently-discussed argument about how far right the Republican Party has drifted over the last 40 years or so, here\u2019s a clip that\u2019s recently resurfaced of Bush Sr. and Reagan in 1980 responding to the question:\u00a0\u201cdo you think that children of illegal aliens should be allowed to attend Texas public schools free, or do you think that their parents should pay for their education?\u201d\u00a0
\nTheir responses weren\u2019t totally based in humanitarianism- there was certainly some self-interested economics and geopolitics- but still, Bush\u00a0\u201creluctantly\u201d says yes and comments that:
\n\n\u2026we are creating a whole society of really honorable, decent family-loving people that are in violation of the law\u2026 I don\u2019t want to see a whole\u2014if they are living here, I don\u2019t want to see a whole\u2014think of six and eight years old kids, being made, you know, one, totally uneducated and made to feel that they are living with outside the law. Let\u2019s address ourselves to the fundamentals. These are good people, strong people. Part of my family is a Mexican.
Reagan says that:
\n\n\n\nRather than making them\u2014or talking about putting up a fence, why don\u2019t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they\u2019re working and earning here, they pay taxes here. And when they wanna go back they can go back, and they can cross\u2014and open the border both ways by understanding their problems.
Remember, Reagan was on the far-right wing of the Republican Party at this time. In an interview on March 2nd (the month before this debate took place, on April 23rd,) Gerald Ford said that\u00a0\u201cevery place I go and everything I hear, there is the growing, growing sentiment that Governor Reagan cannot win the election.\u201d Ford compared him to Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee who was about equally conservative that lost in a landslide in the general election because he was seen as too conservative. Reagan wouldn\u2019t become the ideological standard-bearer of the Republican Party until the middle of his presidency. Now, he\u2019d be too liberal for it.
\n
When I talk about how far cultural politics can reflex my go-to example is the Briggs Initiative, when in 1978 both Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter (successfully) endorsed against a California ballot proposition banning queers from teaching positions, as a pan-establishment front to establish that there was no future in anti-gay politics
And I should specify because it might not be clear from today, that wasn\u2019t just an endorsement from the ex-Governor soon-President and the sitting President, that was an endorsement from the national avatar of political conservativism and the national avatar of evangelical Christian politics
"}