Why are Conservatives so Scared?
Everyone remembers the 2000 POTUS Election.
But do you recall the climate afterwards?
It wasn't what you might think. But what it was, might play into the stink of desperation driving the Conservative Movement, today.
As I recall:
Sen. Jeffords' move out of the GOP threw the Senate into close to a holding pattern.
Bush rode Compassionate Conservatism into what was oft-talked of as a lukewarm Administration.
And not a few pundits were calling for this as the nadir of Conservatism, based on population shifts.
So, what did Conservatives do? As identified by one of a set of documents posted by @jennycohn1, they identified the problem:
The conservative movement is defensive, defeatist, depressed, and apologetic.
They plotted change. Radical change:
We must, as Mr. Weyrich has suggested, develop a network of parallel cultural institutions existing side-by-side with the dominant leftist cultural institutions.
And how to use that change:
We will use guerrilla tactics to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime. We will take advantage of every available opportunity to spread the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the existing state of affairs.
They already had tools to-hand -- Rush and Fox among them. A host of "think-tanks" eager to churn out laws, and how to sell those laws. And loads upon loads of Evangelicals to push out this message.
It was a more sophisticated play at what happened in the late 70s, the moves that got Reagan in-place. My bet? It was seen to be a long slog, with a poor set of GOPers (and a few Democratic "Blue Dogs") to work with...but do-able.
If -- IF -- they could move the ground under them, in time, before the demographic shift became an irresistible force.
And then, September 11th, 2001 happened.
And that's when the US...well, we'll talk about that, esp. “defensive, defeatist, depressed, and apologetic“ in this context, next.