"laissez-faire is not enough," he stressed the need for "some higher value" than the pursuit of wealth. In taking the position that "there can be no such thing as an entirely free market," he acknowledged agreement "with some liberals." What he resented, he said, was liberal "compassion," which was "condescending" and "patronizing."

The new right's constituency included many people who believed that "oil, steel, insurance, and the banks run this country," in the words of a member of the Italian-American Civil Rights League in Brooklyn. "I'd go for public ownership of the oil companies," this man said, "if I didn't think the national politicians were a bunch of thieves." A self-designated conservative Democrat told Jonathan Rieder, "It's not only welfare but the multinational corporations who are ripping us off, taking our jobs away and sending employment to the South and West. The middle classes are the lost people." Kevin Phillips reported in 1982 that the middle-class tax revolt, an important element in the crystallization of the new right, was directed against regressive property taxes, not against the federal income tax. It was "more populist than conservative," according to Phillips. Rising property taxes fell most heavily on blue-collar workers and on members of the lower middle class, and it was they, not the rich, who voted in 1978 for California's famous Proposition 13, which failed to carry a number of upper-income precincts that later went for Reagan in 1980. Both in California and in Oklahoma, voters who favored a reduction of property taxes rejected income tax reduction. The tax revolt, according to Phillips, should not be seen as a mandate for supply-side economics. Few of those who favored cuts in the welfare budget had massive reductions in mind. Phillips found considerable public support, in fact, for a general redistribution of income.

Public opinion polls conducted by Patrick Caddell in the mid-seventies found that a growing number of people simultaneously favored a redistribution of income and tough positions on "social issues." Donald Warren, a Michigan sociologist, reported similar findings in 1973. Thirty percent of his sample said that blacks had too much political power and received more than their share of federal aid, but 60 percent said the same thing about the rich. Eighteen percent said that blacks had a better chance than whites to get fair treatment in the courts, but 42 percent said that rich people had an even better chance. According to recent polls conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, well over half the respondents

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