The Bell Curve’s science served as electoral ammunition for the 1994 Contract with America

Evidence

In fact, it was the resistance to egalitarian measures by those all-powerful beneficiaries of inequality and their producers of racist ideas, like Hernnstein and Murray, that had led to disaster. The book was well marketed, and initial reviews were fairly positive. It arrived during the final straightaway to the 1994 midterm elections, around the time the New Republicans issued their extremely tough “Contract with America” to take the welfare and crime issue back from Clinton’s New Democrats. Charles Murray started the midterm election cycle whipping up voters about the “rise of illegitimacy,” and ended by rationalizing the “Contract with America,” especially the New Republicans’ tough-on-crime “Taking Back Our Streets Act” and tough-on-welfare “Personal Responsibility Act.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1137

Categorization

• QUESTION: Tracks Kendi’s inversion: the book’s research rationalized pre-existing welfare and crime policy rather than driving it. Worth verifying the claim that Murray actively ‘ended by rationalizing’ the Contract — that timing claim could be checked.
• XREF: connects to: The 1995 Contract with America targeted environmental law on four specific fronts — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 23