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Date published: 3/29/2008
DENVER-- A half-century ago, Richard Nixon spearheaded his party's national congressional campaign in the face of a recession like we face today. Then Dwight Eisenhower's vice president, he decided the GOP would champion anti-worker laws pioneered in the segregationist south as a way to defeat Democrats.Specifically, Nixon rolled out "right to work" ballot initiatives When the 1958 election came, Nixon's blame-workers-first initiatives bombed, and Republicans lost 48 congressional seats, handing the party "its worst year ever," as historian Rick Perlstein recounts in his brilliant new book "Nixonland." "Right-to-work wasn't popular with a general public that understood how a strong labor movement had rocketed millions of voters into the middle class," Perlstein writes. Fifty years later, conservatives are ignoring history's teachings and resurrecting Nixon's failed strategy in a place that could decide a close presidential election. Here in Colorado, one of the most contested swing states, a group of zealots is hoping a "right to work" ballot initiative will drive up GOP turnout and help John McCain keep nine electoral votes in the Republican column. The strategy is bold in its desperation. Right-wingers are betting that Colorado citizens will vote to cut their own pay. After all, according to the Economic Policy Institute, employees in right-to-work states make between 4 and Already, a poll shows 56 percent of the state opposes "right to work" laws. Even one of Colorado's most influential business groups has said it has "no desire" for such irrational measures. But the right is not in a rational frame of mind. Colorado conservatives are reeling after Republicans lost both the legislature and Governor's Mansion for the first time in more than four decades. The local Republican Party is so unhinged that it hired Clearly, these are dire times for the right, and despair tends to deify the Nixons and the Wadhamses
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