Mailer Quote

When speaking about the Republican gala:
"Yet here they were, the economic power of America (so far as economic power was still private, not public) the family power (so far as position in in socation was still a passion to average and ambitious Americans) the military power (to the extent that important sword-rattlers and/or patriots were among the company, as well as cadres of corporations were unmarried to the Pentagon) yes, even the spiritual power of America (just so far as Puritanism, Calvinism, conservatism and golf still gave the American WASP and American faith more intense than the faith of cosmopolitainists, one-worlders, trade-unionists, Black militants, new Leftists, acid-heads, tribunes of the gay, families of the Mafia, political machinists, fixers, swingers, Democratic Lobbyists, members of the Grange, and government workers, not to include the Weltanschauung of every partisan in every minority group)."

This one, paragraph-long sentence illucidates the sense erosion of traditional American values within the Republican Party. The counter-culture movement was much smaller than its legacy, but seems to have this profound effect on the party of Eisenhower. It is a stream of conscious fear in the back of the minds of the traditional, small-government Rockefeller Republicans. It is out of this fear of the counter-culture and desperation to keep the traditional American values that the GOP was able to cater to the Southern working classes and evangelicals in a coalition that continues (however precariously) until today through fear of these groups. It plays to the human response to band together to fight against the common enemies. This sentence embodies the sentiment that as the New Left and other counter-culture groups embraced change and rebellion, that there must be a New Right movement. While all the attendees at the gala wore their best furs and diamonds to celebrate a party fundamentally based on the economic principle of trickle-down, they were able to galvanize a base constituency, decades later, focused on family values, starting with the fear of this counter culture. The sentence structure demonstrates the degree to which the party had to adapt. Their traditional principles were eroding quickly with the social mobilization of the counter-culture and they needed to tap a new constituency in the New Right--young people who did not believe in protesting in the streets and embraced the system.