WASHINGTON – “Some people say I’m extreme,” an Indiana tea party leader told The New York Times at the height of the movement’s rebellion in 2010, “but they said the John Birch Society was extreme, too.”
Uh-huh. The society, which still exists, enjoyed its heyday in the early 1960s and saw Communists everywhere. Robert Welch, its founder, even cast President Dwight Eisenhower as a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.” The group was so far-out that the founder of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr., published a 5,000-word excoriation in the National Review that excommunicated the Birchers from the responsible right.
And on Ike, Buckley’s friend and ally Russell Kirk offered a priceless riposte: “Eisenhower is not a Communist. He’s a golfer!”
The tea party loyalist’s observation might bring a chuckle from those who still remember the old Birchers, but it was also telling. Why have our politics gone haywire, why have our political arguments turned so bitter, and why was Donald Trump able to win the Republican nomination and, eventually, the presidency?
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, left, and GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, shake hands on stage at the Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Va., Saturday, July 22, 2017. The two major party candidates in Virginia’s closely watched race for governor clashed at their first debate over President Donald Trump, health care, immigration, and social issues. ( Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP) A central reason has been the mainstreaming of a style of extremist conservative politics that for decades was regarded as unacceptable by most in the GOP.