Economic royalists - and the rest of us

I mentioned [1] my unfortunate encounter with William F. Buckley's heirloom rug. I didn't say, but I bet you can guess, that the glass of scotch I spilled on it was probably quite expensive. William F. Buckley is a very wealthy man.

It was inherited wealth, not running National Review, that made him so; his father was an oil tycoon, who built a patio onto the family manse (which had formerly housed the governor of Connecticut) with gorgeous ceramic tiles plundered from Mexico after they ran him out of the country for organizing against the revolution.

Many of the people running the Republican Party and conservative movement are like Buckley and President Bush. They're aristocrats - "economic royalists," as FDR called them long ago. They've just learned to hide it.

They weren't always so skilled.

Once upon a time, in 1934, American conservatives united against the class traitor running the country by forming something called the "Liberty League." Roosevelt had just passed the Securities and Exchange Act to regulate Wall Street. This they could not let stand. They had to take him down, in the name of all that was good and true.

The great man swatted them away with the back of his hand. "To put it in a Biblical way, it has been said that there are two great commandments—one is to love God, and the other is to love your neighbor," he told the assembled reporters at one of the informal press conferences he used to convene in the Oval Office. "A gentleman with a rather ribald sense of humor suggested that the two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor, and he also raised the question as to whether the other name for their God was not 'property.'"

The Liberty League regrouped. They decided they would put paid to the New Deal once and for all—by convening a black-tie only banquet.

It was January, 1936. Two thousand American aristocrats—we call them "economic conservatives" now—sat in eager anticipation as the former Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith - a 1930's Zell Miller - took to the podium for his keynote speech. The packed tables," The New York Times said, "represented, either through principles or attorneys, a large portion of the capital wealth of the country."

Some people would call them "elites." I would call them George W. Bush's base.

Al Smith hectored for over an hour: "It's all right with me if they want to disguise themselves as Norman Thomas or Karl Marx or Lenin," he said of the administration the American people had awarded the White House in a landslide, "but let me give one solemn warning: There can only be one capital, Washington or Moscow."

The crowd went wild. They had grasped the nettle. They finally had Franklin D. on the run.

Actually, all they had done was make themselves look like pompous asses. FDR's popularity surged. His right-hand man James Farley called the Liberty League offensive "one of the major tactical blunders of modern politics." By June, the Republican Party was all but pretending they had never heard of them.

If only Fred Thompson had a time machine. The far-right former Republican senator, who may soon announce a presidential run, has made the keystone of his platform the fact that he owns a beat-up old, red pickup truck.

I was reminded of all this watching President Bush speak at a recent "town hall meeting in Ohio." Beneath their jeans and work shirts, they still wear black tie and tails. And monocles. And spats. Spiritually, they do. Sometimes they let it slip. It's something I'll be writing about a lot in the future: how if you want to know how conservatives really think, you really have to pay attention to the slip-ups.

Like that time the other week in Ohio. President Bush was explaining why we need an immigration plan that "recognizes that people are doing work here that Americans are not doing." He illustrated his argument with an [2] he probably thought, in his heart of hearts, was as "folksy" as they come: