Where have you gone William Buckley
our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
This story from the National Review details Buckley's fight against the conspiracy theorist John Birch Society. The Birchers may not exist so much any longer, but their wild conspiracies do. https://www.nationalreview.com/2017...n-birch-society-history-conflict-robert-welch
This one covers Buckley as well as Reagan battling JBS but is behind the WaPo firewall, https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...h-society-qanon-reagan-republicans-goldwater/
From that second one on Reagan it says:
As to Buckley, the second article has this paragraph:
our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
This story from the National Review details Buckley's fight against the conspiracy theorist John Birch Society. The Birchers may not exist so much any longer, but their wild conspiracies do. https://www.nationalreview.com/2017...n-birch-society-history-conflict-robert-welch
This one covers Buckley as well as Reagan battling JBS but is behind the WaPo firewall, https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...h-society-qanon-reagan-republicans-goldwater/
From that second one on Reagan it says:
But in September 1965, as buzz about him and the John Birch Society grew, Reagan realized that he’d have to distance himself from the group. “I am not a member,” Reagan declared at a Republican fundraiser. “I have no intention of becoming a member. I am not going to solicit their support.” Reagan added that a “lunatic fringe” had infiltrated the society and that he was in “great disagreement” with Welch.
As to Buckley, the second article has this paragraph:
“One continues to wonder,” Buckley wrote, “how it is that the membership of the John Birch Society tolerates such paranoid and unpatriotic drivel.” Hate mail and subscription cancellations from outraged Birchers flooded the National Review’s office. So Buckley doubled down in follow-up columns, suggesting that Welch represented the membership’s true feelings after all.
I don't know who has the power to play Buckley or Reagan today. Clearly not Romney or Will. But too many in the GOP have gone full-on conspiracy theorists. Sure, it may not be that people like Eisenhower were communists as the JBS believed, but they now believe people like that are part of a deep state. I don't see much of a difference. And thinking that leaders are Satan-worshipping child sex ring members is even a whole new layer of crazy. Hopefully someone steps up and sends the lunatic fringe back to the fringe. It is a bad sign when the lunatic fringe is mainstream. Buckley and Reagan knew that.