Open Left

Movement Conservatives Sure Didn't Give Up on The GOP

In the early 60s, the GOP had just had a moderate conservative 2-term president--Eisenhower--who actually governed pretty much like a true Burkean, unwilling to roll back the New Deal, because it had become part of the fabric of society.  They considered him a "Communist dupe."

They'd just barely lost electing his successor, who was rabidly anti-Communist, but didn't really froth the way they liked it, and had seemed far too content to support the "Communist dupe."

Prior to that, the GOP had run two moderate liberals for the previous three elections.

At no time during this period from 1940 to 1960 did the movement conservatives give up on re-taking the GOP, even though they were far outside even the GOP mainstream.  They really just didn't have a choice.

Despite everything John Emerson has written--quite accurately--about the Democratic Party and its long anti-populist history, in the US system today, progressives have no more choice than conservatives did over that 20-year span.  The odds are more against us, of course, because elite support for us will never be anything like what it's been for movement conservatives.   But the structural realities are what they are.  And some portion of the elite can clearly see that the right is running us off a cliff, and knows that they have more to lose than any of the rest of us.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Tue Jan 26, 2010 at 15:59:30 PM CST