Neo-liberals: Rage of the Unempowered 3

Angry Christians who felt the country was being taken away from them united with equally angry economically and politically conservative Republicans to take back the White House for the first time in nearly fifty years.
It was a lousy marriage. Christians, harking back to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries wanted to restore Christianity to its once pre-eminent place in government and school. They wanted pornography stuff back into its bottle. They wanted prayer in classrooms. They wanted abortion outlawed. Like the Sunni Muslims in Iraq after 2003, they were unable to believe or accept that they were now in the minority in most of their positions.
They’re conservative political allies were much more aware of this reality then they were. Thus there was no big push from the White House for the Christian agenda. Conservative Republicans had their own agenda, and it had little to do with religion.
They wanted the New Deal rolled back, as much as it could be. They wanted government shrunk to a much smaller size. They, too, were unable to achieve the goals for which they had united with Christians to vote Reagan into office.
For one thing, Reagan was also a realist. He knew he faced a Democratic House (and Speaker Tip O’Neal) that was as pro-big government as any member of Roosevelt’s “kitchen cabinet”. Furthermore, Reagan was too laid back, too good humored, to commit himself to any radically immediate course of action. He committed himself to a few things he felt he could change and became a master at waiting. Both in foreign and domestic policies.
He disliked big government as much as any man alive. But he chose to strike at it not through losing Congressional battles over repeal of this or that program—rather he chose to starve what he and his allies regard as an apocalyptic beast.
Tax cuts were his chosen weapon. They’re always popular. Americans especially like to receive governmental benefits but, since the 1760s, have hated paying for them. Lots of conservative Democrats who would have voted passionately against repeal of any New Deal Legislation, were perfectly willing to support Reagan in cutting of their food supply by slashing taxes. Victory wouldn’t come until 2008.
In foreign affairs, he perceived the Cold War as a poker game that had been played for a very limited ten dollar ante. He sensed that while we were the ones holding back, the Russians could afford nothing more. He dumped several billion on the table in a final bet. A year after Reagan left office, the Soviets folded and had to leave the game. It was a brilliant move.
His successes would leave millions of Americans convinced that Reagan’s way was THE way. The next three presidents after him would have to sail into the wind he created even if one was an eastern Republican and another a Democrat.
Meanwhile the Christian conservatives, with their vastly different agenda, were growing disillusioned. Early in Reagan’s second term, fundamentalist Christians gathered behind their own candidate, making delirious plans to take over the Republican Party in 1988. More later.