The GOP’s Socialist Legacy

I was rather amused that an op-ed by Richard Allen published in today’s New York Times did not once invoke the n-word — neoconservative —  in describing the life and work of the recently deceased Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, despite the fact that she was in many respects the very embodiment of neoconservative influence within the Republican party. 

Like most other neocons, she could point to a very exotic pedigree, at least by traditional GOP standards, and often did.

The very precocious granddaughter of a populist and socialist who organized several left-wing movements in Oklahoma, Jeanne Jordan, as she was then known, formed a Young People’s Socialist League, the youth arm of the Socialist Party of America, on the unlikely campus of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she was a student. She recalled in 2002 May Day symposium:

It wasn’t easy to find the YPSL in Columbia, Missouri. But I had read about it and I wanted to be one. We had a very limited number of activities in Columbia, Missouri. We had an anti-Franco rally, which was a worthy cause. You could raise a question about how relevant it was likely to be in Columbia, Missouri, but it was in any case a worthy cause. We also planned a socialist picnic, which we spent quite a lot of time organizing. Eventually, I regret to say, the YPSL chapter, after much discussion, many debates and some downright quarrels, broke up over the socialist picnic. I thought that was rather discouraging.”

A Humphrey Democrat in the late 1960s, Kirkpatrick, along with other intellectuals and trade unionists with strong anti-communist convictions, were aligned with the Social Democrats, USA, which formed the successor organization of the Socialist Party of America. She eventually grew disillusioned with the Democrats and conventional left-wing views on communist containment as the McGovernite wing tightened its grasp within Democratic ranks in the 1970s. But even as this disilluisionment with the Democrats intensified, she still expressed trepidations about aligning herself too closely with the GOP.  (Incidentally, click here for a perversely interesting socialist perspective on the neoconservatives.)

“Listen, Dick, I am an A.F.L.-C.I.O. Democrat and I am quite concerned that my meeting Ronald Reagan on any basis will be misunderstood,” Allen recalls her saying shortly before her first get-acquainted meeting with presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Of course, the rest is history. Kirkpatrick apparently managed to repress her strong unionist sentiments to join forces with the Reagan administration, serving as ambassador to the United Nations and bringing many socialist intellectuals into her staff — the so-called “State Department socialists” who soon gained prominence and influence in the Reagan administration and the Republican party.

After denouncing the Democratic party as the “Blame America First party” at the 1984 GOP Convention, she formally became a Republican in 1985 and, for a time, even toyed with seeking the party’s nomination for president, fearing that George H.W. Bush, the presumed successor to Reagan’s legacy, would waver in his opposition to communism.

I have to concede a grudging degree of admiration for Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Nevertheless, reflecting back on the last quarter century of significant neoconservative presence within the GOP policymaking circles, I can’t help but wonder what my party would look like today without them.

Frankly, judging from our track record within the last few years, I’m not so sure it would look that bad.