Politico: The Man Who Launched the GOP’s Civil War

[Barry]

Ever wonder how the Republican's went from the "Party of Lincoln" to the defenders of the Confederate flag and the "Party of the Billionaires"? Ever wonder how the "Solid South" went from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican over just a few years??

If you're interested and/or a political junkie like me, you'll want to read this excellent long article about that how that came to pass and the man behind it, Roger Milliken, you probably have never heard of.

Barry



The Man Who Launched the GOP’s Civil War
How a textile magnate turned the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Trump.
By Jonathan M. Katz
October 01, 2015

Excerpt:

Milliken’s name does not mean much to most anyone born after the Vietnam War, but he was the godfather to the first generation of modern conservatives. The owner of one of America’s largest private companies, a textile manufacturer he turned into a chemical-processing giant, Milliken used the profits from his staunchly antiunion mills to fund conservatism’s founding institutions, including the National Review and Heritage Foundation. Many of the facts we take for granted in politics today—that the GOP is a conservative party; that it counts on the solid support of white, male, working class voters in the South and West; and that big-money donors can pick and choose its candidates, even to the point of running themselves—were the fruits of his career.

It was weirdly appropriate that Boehner chose to end his farewell press conference with the tune from A Song of the South. It was Milliken who moved to a solidly Democratic Dixie and transformed it into a bastion of Republicanism. Milliken built the South Carolina GOP into a national force, convincing Sen. Strom Thurmond to switch parties and birthing the “Southern Strategy” that put Richard Nixon and later Ronald Reagan into the White House. It was Milliken who inspired all future conservative candidates by pushing Barry Goldwater to run for president, then bankrolling his landmark campaign. Milliken was also the financial patron of the influential libertarian “Freedom School,” which trained a generation of conservative kingmakers, including Charles Koch. “He was the John the Baptist of the Koch Brothers,” says Marko Maunula, a historian at Clayton State University in Georgia.

It was appropriate, too, that when Boehner prepared to quit, he reportedly turned to Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, to encourage the South Carolina congressman to help take his place in the House leadership. Gowdy represents Milliken’s adopted home district of Spartanburg and helping to elect Gowdy in 2010 was one of the final political acts of Milliken’s life. He died just weeks after Gowdy won the House seat, after donating the maximum to Gowdy’s campaign.

Milliken would have understood intuitively the fight between business conservatives and antigovernment libertarians, and voters’ competing desires for help from the state and their allergy to any policy that gives government largess to anyone they see as undeserving. Milliken would have smiled at the presidential candidacies of conservative Republican senators from Texas, Florida and Kentucky. He’d likely have been disappointed by the early exit of an antiunion Wisconsin governor. But he also would have been first to spot the appeal of a candidate riding a wave of antigovernment brio and white, male, working-class discontent—a fellow protectionist billionaire who, publicly and brashly wins admirers by bragging about his ability to buy off the entire field.

See the full article here.