Conservatives Without Conscience

Tom DeLay’s Double High authoritarian personality offers an almost textbook example of the four defining elements of a social dominator: the tendency to dominate; opposition to equality; desire for personal power; and amorality. His domination is apparent in his bare-knuckle Machiavellian management of the House. “DeLay has never been subtle about his uses of the power of Love and Fear,” Newsweek reported. “In his majority whip’s office on the Hill, he kept marble tablets of the Ten Commandments and a half-dozen bullwhips. Many politicians are conflict-adverse and avoid confrontation at all cost. Not DeLay.” He was not nicknamed “the Hammer,” “the Exterminator” (he once was in the pest control business), and the “Meanest Man in Congress” because of his compliant charm. DeLay, in a pattern followed by many Double High authoritarians, became a born-again Christian in 1984, when he was first elected to Congress.[10] He also quit drinking and became an outspoken moralist. He famously blamed high school shootings, like those at Columbine, on the availability of birth control for teens and the teaching of evolution. DeLay’s opposition to equality is less conspicuous, but it is certainly evident in the Texas redistricting plan he brokered. Not only did Republicans benefit under DeLay’s plan at the expense of Democrats, but according to briefs filed with the Supreme Court, the plan was a disaster for blacks and Hispanics.[11] DeLay’s drive to climb the House GOP leadership ladder is evidence of his desire for power. His own colleagues have described him as amoral. “If it wasn’t illegal to do it, even if it was clearly wrong and unethical, [he did it]. And in some cases if it was illegal, I think [he] still did it. That’s my view,” said Representative Chris Shays (R-CT).[12] DeLay’s Double High authoritarianism illustrates a host of the negative traits found in these extraordinary people.

Tom DeLay had not supported Gingrich’s climb to the House GOP leadership ranks. In 1984, when Gingrich was lobbying for the job of minority leader, DeLay had only just arrived in Washington. DeLay’s biographers say that he avoided Gingrich’s “back bench bomb throwing” not because he was unwilling to adopt those methods, but because he had been warned off by others who doubted Gingrich’s tactics would prevail. “DeLay goes with winners,” his biographers wrote. “If he had been born in the Soviet Union and elected to the Duma in 1984, he would be a Marxist,” they reported.[13] But in this case DeLay made a bad call, because Gingrich became minority leader in a very close vote (87 to 85), and he would not forget that DeLay had not backed him.

By early 1994 the GOP leadership believed that conditions were right for a possible takeover of the House. A large number of Democrats had retired in 1992, and more were doing so in 1994. In addition, President Clinton’s national health care proposal had backfired, frightening both Republicans and Democrats. Clinton’s protracted fight to permit gays in the military, along with his pro-choice stance, had rallied conservative Christians and started them marching double time. Republican House leaders had spent the previous decade successfully tearing down the House; Gingrich’s campaign to denigrate Congress had largely succeeded. “The number of Americans expressing a great deal of confidence in Congress steadily declined from 1986 to 1994, after having risen in the years after Watergate,” one scholar discovered.[14] Six weeks before the 1994 midterm election, Gingrich and the GOP leadership announced their “Contract with America,” a promise that if Republicans were given control of Congress they would “dramatically change the way Washington does business, and change the business Washington does.”[15] Trashing the Democratic Congress and then promising to clean it up was typical authoritarian-style manipulation, and authoritarian followers accordingly fell in line. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition alone, which had replaced Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, used churches to distribute thirty-three million voter guides (suggesting whom good Christians should vote for in their districts) in the two weeks preceding the election. Although churches risk losing their tax-exempt status by engaging in electoral politics, Christian conservatives have mastered the art of relaying political messages in the guise of “educational” materials that have a tremendous influence on voting.