Showing the Three Times the Ultra-Conservative Coalition Mobilized to Move the Republican Party to the Right
After World War II and the Truman Administration, a moderate Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was elected President and took office in 1953. The Political Right in the Republican Party, (called the “Taft Wing” after the former President, Robert Taft), had been eclipsed. Three strategists, Frank Meyer, M. Stanton Evans, and William F. Buckley, Jr. decided it was time to carve a conservative movement out of the fractured remains of the Political Right, in part by specifically rejecting the legacy of overt White supremacy and antisemitism. Buckley had gained attention writing for the libertarian journal Freeman, but secured his niche when in 1955 he founded the influential National Review magazine.
Buckley, Evans, and Meyer sought a working coalition—a fusion—bridging three tendencies: economic libertarianism, social traditionalism, and militant anticommunism. According to Jerome L. Himmelstein, “The core assumption that binds these three elements is the belief that American society on all levels has an organic order––harmonious, beneficent, and self–regulating––disturbed only by misguided ideas and policies, especially those propagated by a liberal elite in the government, the media, and the universities.”This coalition plan became known as “Fusionism.”
Cite:
Chip Berlet. 2007. “The New Political Right in the United States: Reaction,
Rollback, and Resentment.” In Michael Thompson, ed, Confronting
the New Conservatism. The Rise of the Right in America. New York, NYU Press. <Buy
it at Powell’s>
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Copyright 2012, Chip Berlet