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Imagine picking up your paper some morning and reading a story like this:
President George W. Bush called on Americans to
support the administration in protecting the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge from oil exploration. The
President also called for designating more wilderness
areas, since `the destructive fires of last summer all
began in areas that had been laced with roads and logged
heavily, and those fires faded out once they reached
wilderness areas.'
Responding to the President's remarks, Senate
Democratic leader Tom Daschle said, `We're the party of the
little guy. And the little guy needs good jobs and
affordable oil and wood for his house. That means more
logging and drilling, not setting aside American resources
for the whims of the elitists in the Republican
Party.'
That sounds more than fanciful today, but if both parties had remained true to their roots, it would be a likely scenario. Environmental protection, especially of public lands, was a mainstay of Republican policy for generations. Democrats, acting on behalf of their constituencies -- public-land ranchers, silver miners, small timber operators -- generally opposed the Republican conservation programs.
Theodore Roosevelt is doubtless the most famous
Republican conservationist, but the process started well
before he entered the White House in 1901. By the time he
left office in 1893, President Benjamin Harrison, a
patrician Republican, had protected 13.5 million acres as
forest reserves,
the ancestors of our modern
National Forests. Before the law was changed in 1907,
Republican presidents had set aside nearly 150 million of
the 170 million protected acres.
Some opposition came from industry-minded Republicans,
but much of it came from Western Democrats. Sen. Henry M.
Teller of Colorado was typical -- federal protection of
forests on public lands was an intrusion into state's
rights, and it deprived his mountain constituents of their
livelihoods. I would rather see people living on the
land than to see timber on it, no matter how beautiful it
is or how fine,
Teller said in 1908.
Against Democratic opposition, Republicans continued to
support conservation long after Theodore Roosevelt's
departure. In 1948, Thomas Dewey of New York was the GOP's
presidential nominee, and he spoke about environmental
issues: Wholesale cutting of timber land has contributed
to the tragedy of floods in the spring and to a shortage of
water at later seasons. The same wholesale cutting of
timber has destroyed fish and wildlife habitats. It has
upset nature's balance in a thousand directions.
Barry Goldwater, the GOP's 1964 nominee, loved the
mountains, canyons, and deserts of his native Arizona. When
the Forest Service was considering a new off-road vehicle
policy in 1973, Goldwater, then a senator, said, I hope
there is some way we could outlaw all off-road vehicles,
including snowmobiles, motorcycles, etc., which are doing
more damage to our forests and deserts than anything man
has ever created.
And most of our current environmental laws -- the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the requirements for Environmental Impact Statements -- took form during the presidency of Richard Nixon, a Republican.
Back then, the Republicans were the patricians who wanted to protect the environment from the little guys that were the backbone of the Democratic Party. Now it's been reversed, at least on the ground in the West. Goldwater's 1964 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination defeated the party's Eastern Establishment, and by 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the nomination and the presidential election, the Republican Party's most energetic activists were Sunbelt populists -- people who liked to get outdoors with their motorboats, four-wheel-drive rigs, hunting gear, and the like.
Nationally, the Republicans might be the party of big
corporate power, but in the West, the GOP is the party that
wants to protect public lands for the people, not from
the people.
It's the Democrats who want to lock
up
public lands by restricting vehicles, limiting
mineral exploration, and all the rest.
Those are perceptions, though. Which party actually
represents the little guy
these days, at least when
it comes to the great outdoors? The answer may be found in
the Statistical Abstract of the United States, which has a
chart that lists recreational activities and household
income.
Of the relevant pursuits, both alpine and cross-country skiing rank near the top -- these are the sports of the relatively affluent. Mountain biking is up there, too, along with snowboarding. Down at the very bottom, in what should be solid Democratic economic territory, are freshwater fishing (despite all those annoying, graphite-rod yupscale anglers), hunting with bow and arrow, and hunting with firearms.
When was the last time you saw a Democratic candidate skinning an elk or holding a deer rifle?
Some Democrats, it seems, are catching on, though.
In Idaho's senate race, Democratic candidate Alan
Blinken has been driving the campaign trail this fall in a
car that sports a bumper sticker reading,I'm a
gun-totin'Idaho Democrat.
I'm a gun nut,
he told
The New York Times. I own eight pistols, eight rifles,
eight shotguns, and I use them all.
Alaska Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fran Ulmer
made a big deal out of buying a new gun for the campaign
trail earlier this year. It seems her other eight guns,
which include a long-barrel .44-caliber Magnum revolver,
don't fit well in a suit pocket. But that was Alaska, and
the Anchorage Daily News reports that one of Ulmer's
potential opponents, Wayne Ross, once owned hundreds of
guns, but has since pared down his collection.
Ross,
a board member of the National Rifle Association, lost the
Republican primary to Sen. Frank Murkowski, despite backing
from rock star and gun freak Ted Nugent.
But it's more than guns. It's more like machinery in
general. In the December 2001 edition of Atlantic Monthly,
David Brooks contrasted a nearby portion of Red
America
(Bush country, specifically Franklin County,
Penn.) to Blue America
(Gore country, specifically
Montgomery County, Md.) where he lived. One big difference,
Brooks noted, is that Everything that people do in my
neighborhood without motors, the people in Red America do
with motors. We sail; they powerboat. We cross-country ski;
they snowmobile. We hike; they drive ATVs.
Or, as my Republican friend Dave Skinner, a former staff
writer for the Wise Use
People for the West, put it:
When it comes to the outdoors, Democrats are the dour
puritans. You're in sacred places and you're supposed to be
reverential and practice the proper rituals. We
Republicans, we're about having some fun. Guess who's going
to get the most votes where people enjoy outdoor
recreation?
For the past 25 years or so, the Republicans have flowed with the cultural currents of the rural West. They've been the party of guns and jeeps, and they win elections; they get the votes of the people who get hurt most by the national Republican economic policies designed to make sure the rich get richer. The little guy in the little town might not have medical care, or a job that pays him enough to move out of the trailer park, and his kids may go to ramshackle schools -- but he seems to care more about his gun and his pickup, and for them, the Republicans are on his side.
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