Six Lessons From the Southern Republican Leadership Conference
Just because you love Sarah Palin doesn't mean you want her to run for president, and other observations.
I just spent three days in the closest thing there is to the central nervous system of the modern Republican Party. It's not the GOP cloakroom of the U.S. Senate, not Sean Hannity's morning staff meeting, it's not Bill Kristol's brain. It's the quadrennial meeting of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, this time in New Orleans, the city where the gathering was first held decades ago.
In 1969, a conservative 40-year-old businessman from Greenville, Miss., named Clarke Reed gathered right-leaning Southern Democrats at the (now long gone) Jung Hotel, served them baked Alaska ("The waiters sang us 'When the Saints Come Marching In,' " Reed remembers with a laugh) and declared that the GOP—hated and feared from the days of Lincoln—was the future of the South and that the South was the future of the GOP.
At the time this was considered revolutionary, but in retrospect it seems inevitable. After Democrats under Lyndon Johnson backed the civil-rights movement and the Great Society in the '60s, Republicans such as Reed knew—and sought to steer—what was coming next: an exodus of Southern white voters from the party of their ancestors.
Reed's initial New Orleans meeting foreshadowed what became Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" of 1970 and 1972. The rest, as they say, is history. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush moved the South into the GOP column in presidential elections, while the Newt Gingrich-led revolution of 1994 delivered many of the last Blue Dog Democrats' congressional seats to Republicans. The South isn't exactly "solid," but for a generation it has been—and largely remains now—the anchor of the national Republican Party.
At a private dinner the other night, Reed was in a feisty, upbeat mood. President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have jolted the party; they are the kind of Democrats (big-city liberals) who can, and will, scare Republicans straight to the voting booth this fall—even if they don't automatically stir racial and gender resentment, too. So it's not surprising that this was the largest SRLC group in history, with more than 3,000 delegates filling a ballroom at a downtown Hilton overlooking the Mississippi River.
And here's what I picked up:
In that other, larger world, people like Barbour seem particularly out of place. Talking to CNN on Sunday, he was asked about the Virginia governor's initial failure to include a reference to slavery in a proclamation honoring Confederate history. "It doesn't amount to diddly," Barbour said dismissively. It's the kind of response that his former boss, Clarke Reed, would avoid—and one that is all too emblematic of the limitations of the organization Reed used to run.
Howard Fineman is also the author of The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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