ABSTRACT
The political legacy of the New Deal and the impact of the cold war kept alive a rationale for a powerful central state. The slow growth of the Republican party in the South during the 1950s provided a political base for a new generation of conservatives. The election of Richard Nixon in 1968 did little to stop the trend described by J. Q. Ronald Reagan, elected to the presidency with substantial working class support, was the first president of the post second World War era to challenge domestic liberalism and sense its weakness. The Republican party in the cold war years faced the worst of two worlds—an elitist funding base and a narrow constituent base. Liberalism increasingly ignored the concerns of ordinary Americans at a time when their economic conditions were deteriorating. In the 1994 election, the Congressional Republican party became the vehicle and the beneficiary of this anger—white males voted 62 percent Republican.
