People don't get.
Movement Conservatism has the scope and power of the old New Deal Liberalism, which controlled American politics and opinion for nearly 40 years.
New Deal Liberalism was so powerful that both parties were forced to obey it. Nixon was a New Deal Liberal despite wanting desperately to destroy it. Reagan strengthened Social Security because
even he could not defeat the consensus. This is why both parties seemed nearly identical in the 50s and 60s. The American desire for the New Deal created a consensus which politicians could not kill. (This is why corporations fear things like Social Security and Health Care. Not because these programs don't work, but because they work too well, i.e., voters
want the candy. Corporations don't want any impediments to cheap labor and monopoly control of American markets. They don't want to put the public interest between share holder and bottom line. They don't want government agents sniffing around their smokestacks or running tests on the cancer causing agents in their food)
Dear Reader, I'm asking you to understand the power of major historical movements. Once in place, they create an impenetrable network of government agencies with industry-fed money loops. They also create electoral coalitions so they can maintain effective majorities at the federal, state, and local levels. They fund university research and control media editorial boards. They decide who gets elected and who gets destroyed. They determine election laws. They control gerrymandering. They control how people understand government. They pay people to create stories about how Obama has ties to Muslim terrorists and how poor people created the 2008 meltdown (as AIG and Goldman slip into the night). This is what powerful movements do. And nothing short of a movement can move something as large and unruly as the United States of America.
Dear Reader, there is something else you should know about movements. They are revolutionary. They seek nothing less than radical change to the existing order. In other words, they are emphatically not Conservative (but they have no problem
using Conservatism. Reagan passed the nation's most liberal abortion policy as governor of California, but he saw the moral majority as a useful tool to capturing the Silent White Majority, i.e., Reagan was a
politician, and all
politicians depend on useful idiots who cry when Dear Leader speaks of the "Evil Empire". Reagan played middle America like a fiddle as he handed the nation's future to stateless transnationals, opened borders, sold weapons to terrorists, and created structural deficits as far as the eye could see. FYI: the Movement has erased all of this from the official record).
http://books.google.com/books?id=hQ...&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=4s...&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
The reason Movement Conservatism was able to finally defeat New Deal Liberalism is because the Left committed political suicide in the 60s: radicals moved the Democratic party away from southern dixiecrats & northern catholic workers toward Civil Rights, feminism, secularism, and multiculturalism. They moved the party from Cold War patriotism to anti-war rebellion -- and so they lost middle America. This allowed the Right to use the Culture War to capture the great white Silent Majority. Once the Right had the electoral power, they were able to win elections and slowly mold government into their own special interest machine -- they finally had the money to create a powerful movement which efficiently turned business profits into political outcomes. Indeed, they created a universe of think tanks, political action committees, publishing groups, and lobbying networks that allowed them to hire an army of workers who produced whatever data, news story, or dirty trick necessary to keep power. This kind of power allowed them to steal elections and start questionable wars. This is what movements do.
The primary goal of Movement Conservatism has long been to break liberal voting coalitions. This is why they target unions and college kids. Their goal is to make it hard for Democrats to vote. Period. This is what movements do. When The Movement saw college kids standing behind Obama, it immediately went to work drawing up battle plans to thwart the ability of college kids to vote. Do you know how much money pours into the Movement for controlling the outcome of elections? Movements prevent the wrong people form voting. This is why they scrubbed the voting roles of African Americans in Florida 2000. This is why they made sure Columbus and inner city Cleveland didn't have enough voting machines in 2004.
Dear Reader, there is something you must know about movements. They don't care about the law. They don't care about the truth. They are at war.
(and they stop at nothing)
The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives ... - Google Books
