Back in the Halcyon Days of the Conservative Movement

[EasyAce]

They looked more like our own than many purists appreciate
By Michael Brendan Dougherty
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/conservatism-decline-not-really/

. . . The Donald Trump presidency, and the depredations of this or that little faction of the conservative movement, has brought in a long round of complaints about how it was back in the halcyon days . . . Back in the halcyon days, you didn’t have Ann Coulter. True, you had Westbrook Pegler. Back in the halcyon days, you didn’t have Sean Hannity, you had Bob Grant, and before him, good gawd, you had Father Coughlin.

Is Donald Trump the great fall? Perhaps. But he’s not the first media star with dubious political credentials to win over sufficient, or enthusiastic, support from the American Right to win high office. Hannity promoted known philanderer Arnold Schwarzenegger for the governorship of California, over the more ideologically solid Tom McClintock. This was after Schwarzenegger was credibly reported to have defended his extramarital activity with the phrase “Eating’s not cheating.” I’m not sure where to file that aphorism among the eternal verities.

And of course there was Ronald Reagan, too. He was also an actor, or what conservatives in another set of halcyon days would have called “a whore.” Reagan still functions almost like a saint or apostle in the conservative movement, even though his marital status would have disqualified him among conservatives, back in yet further halcyon days, as a bigamist. Then there’s his wife. Before it lost its standards, the moral majority of the halcyon days even further removed would have seen the reports of her séances and recognized her for what she was, even in the White House: a practicing witch . . .

. . . As far back as I look into it, I cannot find a time when the modern American conservative movement was free of the debates, difficulties, and problematic affinities we imagine are uniquely besetting it today . . .

[jmyrlefuller]

There was plenty of skepticism over Arnold going in. I remember it well. He was pretty much what conservatives warned about: better than Gray Davis, but not as good as it could have been. (Then again, it's California, and given who lives in that state now it'd be tough to get anyone much further right than Arnold elected; this isn't the same state that elected Reagan anymore.)

I don't recall anyone ever speaking of Arnold as the emblem of American conservatism. There are plenty who have preached Trump's superiority.

[EasyAce]

I don't recall anyone ever speaking of Arnold as the emblem of American conservatism. There are plenty who have preached Trump's superiority.

@jmyrlefuller
There were those at TOS who went through contorted hoops trying to convince people (including themselves?) that Schwarzenegger would shake out as
a conservative. Those hoops were more twisted than the ones circus clowns used to twist into pretzels and somehow straighten out.