Cowboy Conservatism

In his study of the demise of Democratic party dominance in Texas, Sean P. Cunningham provides a vivid, informative, and frequently insightful chronicle of Texas politics between 1963 and 1980. Basing his analysis on extensive archival research, Cunningham surveys the rise of a new breed of conservative Republican in Texas, the relatively limited appeal of white backlash politics in the state, and the triumph of the Republican party in the 1970s. Ronald Reagan's defeat of President Gerald R. Ford in the Texas Republican primary in 1976 is the “critical turning point” in his story (p. 155). In 1980, a state dominated by Democrats only twenty years before embraced the GOP. By 2002 the Republican party controlled all statewide offices, the state legislature, and both Senate seats. Cunningham advances claims about the relevance of his story to the national success of conservatism and the creation of a “new political culture” in Texas based on ideology rather than party, yet the value of his monograph lies in his rich and vivid account of Texas politics (p. 3). We learn of the Republican governor Allan Shivers's egregious 1954 ploy to combat his liberal opponent in heavily African American east Texas: His campaign hired a black man to drive through the region in a new Cadillac and boast of his support for Shivers's rival. In 1972 the Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern proposed heavily taxing toy guns and toy soldiers to discourage violence, immensely aiding the national GOP’s self-conscious effort to redefine liberalism in terms of weakness. In 1976, in an effort to woo social conservatives, Reagan was not above attacking First Lady Betty Ford for suggesting that premarital sex was “okay” (pp. 169–70

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