Don Pesci: In search of Anti-Semitism in Conn. and elsewhere

William F. Buckley Jr. in 1985

VERNON, Conn.

National Review, founded by the late William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) in 1955, has been a stumbling block to neo-progressive Democrats for nearly seven decades. The mission of the magazine, Buckley announced at its founding, was to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

Jack Fowler, now running for city clerk in Milford, Conn., has been associated with the magazine for more than three decades and served for a time as its publisher.

Fowler, along with Buckley and other non-far-right conservatives at National Review, cannot reasonably be accused of either anti-Semitism or unflinching support of former President Donald Trump.

Long before Trump threw his hat in the presidential-campaign ring, Buckley characterized Trump as a “vulgarian,” and National Review later took some kicks in the stomach for having devoted a whole issue of the magazine to a political polemic titled “Never Trump.”

In 1992, Buckley published what some consider the best view of modern anti-Semitism, In Search of Anti-Semitism.

John O’Sullivan, then publisher of National Review, characterized the book this way: “It is not a history of anti-Semitism, nor a social-psychological definition of anti-Semitism, not a survey of anti-Semitism in the world today.” The book is rather “an examination of how anti-Semitism is treated when it appears, or is alleged to appear, in the limited but influential milieu in which he [Buckley] happens to live: opinion magazines, op-ed pages, syndicated columns, television talk shows.”

The book may be considered especially relevant considering the current pro-Hamas protests, some of them patently anti-Semitic, among leftist outposts in ivy-league fever swamps, opinion magazines, op-ed pages, syndicated columns and television talk shows.

“The election for Milford city clerk,” a Hartford paper reports, “is traditionally a low-key, overlooked local contest for a job that includes approving items like marriage and dog licenses. But the campaign this year has exploded into charges and countercharges as Democrats are blasting Republican Jack Fowler for a series of controversial posts on a variety of subjects dating back to 2012.”

Opposition researchers likely associated with Connecticut’s mud-throwing Democrat Party have unearthed “a series of controversial tweets by Fowler that date back more than a decade and involve sharply criticizing another Milford Republican and making references to Jews.”

The tweet in question “written by Fowler, which came to light recently when retweeted to nearly 44,000 followers by Connecticut Democrats, states “Jewrack Jewbama. Jew Biden. Nancy Jewlosi. Hebrewllary Clinton. Yeah, you’re right now that I think about it.”

Fowler, the paper observes, “admits writing the posts but says they were either sarcastic, done in jest or responding to news events of the day that cannot be understood properly without knowing the original tweets that caused the response… Fowler says he was responding to another post, which has since been deleted, that had criticized National Review, which is a staunch defender of Israel. In addition, Fowler released a series of pro-Israel tweets that he wrote, along with three articles that he authored for the magazine on anti-Semitism.”

Defending himself from a charge of anti-Semitism, Fowler answered, “There is no question where I stand thoroughly, very publicly, repeatedly, voluminously over the years [on Israel]. To be accused to being anti-Semitic is reprehensible, especially by people who know it’s not true. … People who know me in Milford know this is B.S. This is the age we live in. It’s not to win an election. It’s to destroy the reputation of somebody.”

Given the prevailing circumstances in the hot war between Israel and Hamas, every rhetorician on planet earth would acknowledge that, if you are defending yourself against an unwarranted charge of anti-Semitism, you are losing the argument. Quite like a poisonous false charge of racism, the mere making of the charge itself is certain proof of culpability.

Fowler’s statement, even if made in jest, said state Democratic Party Chairperson Nancy DiNardo, is “inappropriate.” But it is seemingly appropriate to tat political opponents with anti-Semitism. Such ideological tattoos do not easily wear away, even if they are demonstrably false.

DiNardo, applying her pitch-brush more broadly, continued “I think it points to how bad the Republican Party is getting. They’re going to be extremists at every single level. It’s just not what the Connecticut voters stand for… He was the publisher of an ultraconservative, far-right magazine. Of all the candidates that the Republicans could have picked in Milford, and they picked him? That’s shocking to me. He’s not a good candidate to be running for this position.”

The easily shocked DiNardo very likely has never leafed through the non-far-right, non-ultraconservative National Review. She certainly has never read Buckley’s In Search of Anti-Semitism.

We have here reached a point –of no return? – in which ideologically polluted charges need not be proven before they are unjustly launched against political foes simply to win elections.

When Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass rebukes Humpty Dumpty for having used the same word to mean opposite things, Humpty Dumpty replies imperiously that the word he is using means exactly what he “chooses it to mean, neither more nor less. The only question is – who rules.”

In Connecticut, Democrats rule.

Don Pesci is a Vernon-based columnist.

James P. Freeman: Charlie Baker is sort of Nixonian

In his marvelously insightful book, A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr., Alvin S. Felzenberg recalls the 1960 presidential contest when the National Review founder saw then-candidate Richard Nixon as “less the leader of the GOP than as the ‘amalgamator’ of all the forces that composed it.” More than a half century later, a sensible survey of the Republican Party reveals that Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and President Donald Trump are, likewise, “amalgamators.” They share similar Nixonian propensities.

Despite the differences in their personalities and philosophies, Baker and Trump understand 2017 politics:  Recalcitrant Republicans — particularly conservatives — can be circumvented in the political process, and more importantly, in the creation of public policy. Baker and Trump exhibit a marked disdain for  real conservatives. As did Nixon.

Writing for National Review in 2013, commemorating Nixon’s 100th birthday, John Fund reasoned that the president “governed more as a liberal than anything else.” Nixon, he wrote, “didn’t really like or trust conservatives, even if he hired a bunch of them.” Furthermore, “he used them and freely abandoned their principles when convenient.”

Fund cited Nixon’s numerous liberal domestic initiatives, such as creating the Environmental Protection Agency and calling for universal healthcare. These initiatives also included sweeping regulations on the economy (wage controls), affirmative action (employment quotas), and massive increases in welfare (Food Stamps). And international initiatives (opening up to China). Such actions reflected Nixon’s own background and association with what Nixon himself called the “progressive” wing of the party.

Fund concluded that “at best, it’s the record of a progressive Republican who, in the end, didn’t view conservatism as a valid governing philosophy — even though it was the basis of the republic created by the Founding Fathers.”

Today, a political amalgamator is understood as one who feels compelled to forge bipartisan coalitions with the hope that it produces suitable progress for those believing that government — at all levels — is dysfunctional. The urgency for bipartisanship is especially acute for Baker and Trump, neither of whom who hold a core political philosophy other than a kind of modulating progressivism, which floats from one issue to the next. They must know — especially Baker — that while this may be a glamorous way of governing, it is a hazardous way for securing their future. For Baker, this is strategic; for Trump, it is more tactical.

But the message is clear:  Amalgamate Republicans incinerate conservatives.

Last year, Robin Price Pierre, writing in The Atlantic, believed that Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign bore a “striking resemblance to the 2016 presidential race:  Both have highlighted primal American fears.” The 1968 election, Pierre suggested, offered insight into why Trump’s supporters identified themselves as the “Silent Majority,” a term that Nixon employed to describe the electorate “whose fears and insecurities he successfully rode into the White House.”

Both elections ultimately signaled that “America, its values, and its power structure were under threat by a violent, liberal agenda.” Like Nixon in 1968, Trump in 2016 came into office after eight years of progressive governing. And those respective elections heralded shifts in political power and rhetorical discourse.

This past March, conservative commentator Mark Levin, on Facebook, asked, “Is Trump channeling Nixon?” On his syndicated radio show he said that there is a “Nixonian aspect to this administration.” Massive spending proposals on infrastructure and family-leave entitlements, coupled with talk of severe protectionism have fed Levin’s frenzy. He bemoaned the lack of any constitutional conservatives in Trump’s most senior policy and political circles. Those closest to the president include nationalist populists and progressive liberals, he noted. But no conservatives.

In the wake of Trump’s Sept. 6 agreement with Democrats — not Republicans — on spending (the continuing resolution), the debt ceiling, and Hurricane Harvey aid, Levin again spoke of the president’s “Nixonian habits.” Trump’s recent actions were “lurching left,” raising fears that he would continue in that direction.

Levin warned that “radical progressives,” including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, with whom Trump has suddenly and surprisingly become friendly — “have absolutely no intention of supporting bipartisan government.”

At the White House, on Sept. 13, with Trump speaking to a “bipartisan group” and working in a “bipartisan fashion” (his phrasings), the real news wasn’t a purported deal he sought on DACA, over dinner with Pelosi and Schumer. The real news was Trump declaring, in response to a reporter’s question about skeptical conservatives: “Well, I’m a conservative,” and “if we can do things in a bipartisan manner that will be great.”

Conservative?

Like Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, Trump is a cryptoconservative:  virtual, speculative and fleeting. A novelty. But  the megalomaniac Trump is intent on using cryptographic techniques to strike any deal; whether or not a good deal, whether or not with Republicans, is irrelevant.

Baker suffers no such grandiose illusions. But he also tears a big page out of the Nixon playbook. Only more emphatically.

His first attempt at purging the party of conservatives began during the 2014 primary season, at the Massachusetts Republican Party nominating convention, in a nasty fight with Tea Party member Mark Fisher. The party ultimately settled a lawsuit in early 2015 with Fisher, for which he was paid $240,000.

The lawsuitcame from this situation: In Massachusetts a GOP candidate must receive 15 percent of the vote of delegates at convention to secure a position on the primary ballot. Baker’s people say that Fisher never achieved that threshold but Fisher’s people asserted that Baker suppressed convention votes on Baker’s favor, effectively manipulating the vote against Fisher. So Fisher sued. He ultimately got on the primary ballot but it made no difference. The settlement was reached after the 2014 gubernatorial general election.

In the March 2015 issue of The Atlantic, Molly Ball called Baker a “technocrat” who, during the 2014 gubernatorial election, “aggressively promoted his liberal stances on hot-button issues.” Boston liberals, Ball wrote, “seem grateful to Baker for being a Republican they can get behind.” Shortly after Baker’s victory, he assembled a bipartisan cabinet “that included several Democrats and independents.” No mention of conservatives. (A Boston area blogger observing the transition said Baker’s team took “a nonpartisan approach to state government and its problems.”)

Ball wondered if Baker’s election augurs a return to liberal Republicanism reminiscent of Nelson Rockefeller. But the governor did not see himself as a model for others. He is not a model. Rather, he is an anomaly:  A progressive masquerading as a Republican, who enjoys a 71 percent approval rating (higher than Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s) in a progressive state with a legislature dominated (over 80 percent) by Democrats.

Baker has described his governing style as “relentless incrementalism,” which may have inspired National Review in August 2016 to conclude Baker “resembles an older variety of conservative.”

Conservative?

That characterization now needs a thorough reassessment. Today, Baker resembles a Nixonian conservative, which is to say progressive Republican. Which is to say not a conservative.

In retrospect, Baker is about as affectionate to conservatives as sharks are to seals; his lurch left over the last 12 months has been remarkable. He appointed a progressive, Rosalin Acosta, as labor secretary. He angered conservatives for vowing to replace Planned Parenthood funding with state dollars if Washington pulls its support for the program. And incrementalism will not fix the troubled MBTA transit system or the state’s towering indebtedness and unfunded pension obligations. These problems were indeed created by partisan progressives over decades, who certainly did not consider bi-partisanship while committing such grand malfeasance. These problems desperately need definitive conservative solutions. What happened to fiscal conservatism?

There are worrisome challenges looming on Baker’s horizon.

Just last month, Joe Battenfeld in the Boston Herald alarmingly reported that some leading conservatives simply won’t vote for Baker in next year’s gubernatorial race. And last June, Jim O’Sullivan, in The Boston Globe, wrote that the governor “recently told his fund-raisers that he wants nearly a third of Democrats and almost three in five independent voters to support him.” Baker, O’Sullivan admitted, “holds greater appeal among moderates and less among the GOP base.” He won in 2014 by a margin of only 40,000 votes, or less than 2 percent. His political calculus may discount Republicans and conservatives in 2017 but Baker will need every one of the state’s 479,237 registered Republicans, who still account for nearly 11 percent of all registered voters, in 2018 to win reelection.

With perverse irony, it is possible that Baker and Trump might, at their peril, galvanize conservatives. Classical conservatives, furious at being sidelined, could coalesce with libertarian progressives to forge a new political partnership, a disruptive third party. There is still time in Massachusetts to do this as a form of protest, to punish Baker’s leftward drift. He surely loses with substantial vote-splitting.  

Conservatives could simply stay home, too. As Felzenberg summarizes Bill Buckley’s thinking during the 1960 presidential election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon:  “‘We actually increase our leverage,’ Buckley told a friend, ‘by refusing to join the parade’.”      

James P. Freeman is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com.