A CONSERVATIVE ATTACK ON THE
BASTIONS OF LIBERAL POWER

The increasingly antidemocratic flavor of liberals in recent years has been remarked upon by many scholars, not just Alan Wolfe and Ronald D'Workin. Indeed, it has become ever more apparent that the power of the minority coalition rests not upon an appeal to a broad base of support in the electorate, but on liberal control of certain institutions of power - specifically, (1) the federal, state and county bureaucracies, (2) the liberal media, and (3) the state and federal judiciary.

During the last decade, conservatives have begun to mount what appears to be a vast and powerful assault on these bastions of liberal power. The main axis of this attack has proceeded along the line of "shrinking the size of government" - largely hidden under the guise of "tax reform" and "tax relief." While this attack has been obscured under the rubric of a "grassroots tax revolt" (which is somewhat true in itself), its main purpose (insofar the principal instigators of this attack are concerned) has been to "dry up" and/or diminish the county, state and federal bureaucracies which conservatives perceive to be the main bastions of liberal power - and, as a matter of fact, this is precisely what is happening. By starving these bureaucracies (and the programs these bureaucracies were created to support) for money, conservatives have forced thousands of "public sector" layoffs and gutted hundreds of liberal social programs throughout the country, and to the extent they have done so, they have reduced the liberal power base.

Ancillary attacks have also been mounted against the judiciary. One recent development has been the notion that the Constitution should be amended to permit decisions of the Supreme Court to be overturned by a vote of Congress. [The U.S. is the only Western nation which does not permit this.] This is a position that Robert Bork has been pushing, and it is one that is increasingly gaining favor among conservative Washington think tanks and within the conservative movement in general. [Bork suggests a simple majority like most other Western democracies; others have suggested a "super-majority" of some sort.]

In addition, a concerted attack on the liberal "mainline press" has also produced astounding results. It has succeeded to a large degree in discrediting the "mainline press" in the eyes of millions of voters throughout the country, and has helped to fashion a number of alternative media which bypass the "mainline press" - i.e., "talk-radio," Christian television and radio, the establishment of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, the creation of the internet, etc.

What all this has produced is a great diminution of liberal power, and this has manifested itself in back-to-back Republican victories in recent congressional elections. And one shouldn't be too quick to posit Clinton's victory in the recent presidential election (1996) as proof to the contrary. Clinton won by splitting the conservative vote between Perot and Dole and moving decidedly to the right by co-opting many Republican programs as his own - hardly a recipe for a liberal resurgence.

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