Movement Conservatism

8 Things About The Conscience of a Liberal #3
What I Learned from Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal

It might be hard to believe this, but there was a brief moment in time when the Republicans were not overtly hostile to New Deal programs. When Harry Truman won election in 1948, the writing was on the wall for much of the party. There were actually liberal Republicans who were not knee-jerk ideologues who opposed anything and everything that involved the government. Things changed. Consider the beacons of the conservative movement.

In 1955, William F. Buckley started the National Review, a magazine of conservative opinion that would be influence among a select group of conservative intellectuals. This was the beginning of the conservative philosophy that you know so well today. They were racist. They were elitist. They were pro-business. They were religious. They were also undeniably intellectual and they were not the people to bring conservatism to the masses.

Senator Joe McCarthy was a ruthless anti-communist and in the early 1950s, he led a series of Senate investigations designed to find the communists that he believed had infiltrated much of our government. While he was viewed initially as a hero by many, he would quickly wear out his welcome and he would pass away in 1957 a disgraced man. Although many conservative revisionists such as Ann Coulter are trying to rehabilitate his image, most Americans aren't buying it. He was clearly not the man to bring conservatism to the masses.

In 1964, the Republican party made Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona their nominee for President. He hated unions and he hated the New Deal and really, what else did the conservatives need? He would be the first major candidate for national office that represented the budding conservative movement. He lost to President Johnson by a large margin, but the seeds were sown.

Richard Nixon would take the white house back for the Republican Party in 1968, but he was not the conservative's man. On many domestic issues, he was pragmatic if not downright liberal. The conservative movement did learn something about tactics from Nixon however. He was their kind of win at any cost, damn the rule of law candidate. He would lie, distort, defame when necessary and would go on to pioneer the Republican tactic of exploiting the fears and prejudices of white southerners to win election. Every Republican candidate to win the Presidency since learned from this playbook.

The man who would lead the conservatives out of the political wilderness would be Ronald Reagan. He first rose to prominence as a political force at the 1964 Republican convention. He would win election as Governor of California in 1968 which was the first major victory for movement conservatism. He had a knack for expressing conservative viewpoints in a way that your average everyday white guy could understand. He knew how to speak in code to tap into those little resentments that white men felt. Yes, Ronald Reagan knew how to speak to whitey.

So, Ronald Reagan was the man, but so much more contributed to the rise of movement conservatism, including an infrastructure of right-wing think tanks complete with their own professional conservative pseudo-intellectuals. In a world that seemed to be falling apart after communist victories in southeast Asia and Africa, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the conservatives projected strength and painted the Democrats as appeasers with broad strokes, very much over the top, but convincing none the less to many, many white folk.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency and promptly put the New Deal in his sights. The Great Divergence had begun.