Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (Politics and Culture in Modern America)

by Nicole Hemmer

“free enterprise, limited constitutional government and individual freedom.”

Human Events launched its “What You Can Do” section, structured to correspond with the congressional calendar.

Published each week Congress was in session and modeled after the political guidance

offered by labor unions, this section concentrated on fifteen key bills per year, providing a roa...

McCaffrey believed that just as National Review had responded to readers’ calls for action

it now had to respond to its readers’ growing hunger for electoral activism.

The 1960 election had demonstrated their ability to promote and organize around a single candidate,

they had given conservatives the tools for assessing candidates’ ideologies and in the process cemented their reputations as the best judges of conservative policies and politicians. And through their political action conferences, they had begun the process of turning grassroots activists into organized voters—all under the leadership of those working in conservative media.

Together they were the “the Donor, the Dealer, and the Darling” of the conservative movement.

Goldwater entered the race promising “a choice, not an echo,”

their belief in institutional biases against conservatives, their faith in the innate conservatism of the American people, and their preference for ideological integrity over political pragmatism.

By Election Day, conservative media activists would have a clear sense both of their power and of its limitations.

“By 1956 I was rid—once and for all—of the idea that politics could ever really do what needed to be done.

I have, rather, merely considered it my personal duty to use that hard-won and otherwise wholly wasted expertise to press the conservative case in political terms whenever and wherever I could.”

He knew that what was best for the Republican Party and what was best for the conservative movement would not always be the same thing. When the two came into conflict, Rusher would always choose the movement.

This approach, which paired ideology with a sense of political timing and strategy, meant Rusher didn’t have much interest in

“Rusher’s Razor” (as his favored dictum became known)

If Conscience of a Conservative had been Goldwater’s statement of conservative belief, The Forgotten American was his statement of conservative strategy.

As such, the two documents demarcated the space between the dogmatic and the pragmatic. Some conservatives embraced this as good sense.

“a politically marketable brand of conservatism.”

Though Goldwater was still disinclined to undertake a presidential run, his supporters were determined to mount one for him.

backroom bosses

and Lippmann’s fear that his victory would “rupture that cohesiveness around the moderate center which is the special genius of the American party system.”

For conservatives, that rupture was the point.

They saw bipartisanship as one of the fundamental flaws in postwar politics, particularl...

around nonconservative...

the Goldwater campaign transformed their goal into re...

Stung by the coverage of his “extremism” line at the convention and subsequent depictions of him as a trigger-happy warmonger, Goldwater began striking a more moderate note but also sought to limit press influence in shaping the campaign narrative.

In a lighter but still pointed moment, his press secretary handed out gold pins to reporters on the press plane that read “Eastern Liberal Press.”

“the vicious bias of the press and the television networks against Barry Goldwater.”

According to Manion, they were able to tear through in part because Goldwater did not rely on the mainstream press to represent his positions.

“It is not helpful to Goldwater or to the conservative cause to assert apodictically, and pridefully, that he will win.”21

Goldwater as a mainstream Republican, rubbing shoulders with Rockefeller and Nixon, hardly fit the image of the man who had defended extremism at the convention.

Washington Post made the point more succinctly: “They decided in Hershey that the ‘Goldwater Bar’ is more palatable with fewer nuts!”22

(The campaign thought so, too; they tried to use “Hello, Barry” at the convention, but the musical’s producer threatened the Republican Party with a $10 million lawsuit. The producer instead licensed it to the Democrats, whose convention opened to the tune of “Hello, Lyndon!”)

The McDowell book received a huge spread in Human Events, which printed a ten-thousand-word excerpt packaged as a pro-Goldwater handout, as well as a favorable review by Rusher in National Review.

He certainly desired profits and popularity but, in the absence of both, cultivated an air of speaking to an enlightened remnant in a benighted world. So

But these low-priced, mass-distributed paperbacks were different. They were self-published by unknown authors. They contained few mentions of Goldwater. And while they seldom appeared in traditional bookstores, each sold millions of copies, making tidy profits for their authors-cum-publishers.

Yet readers burned through the books, all of which advanced the movement’s case in 1964: liberal policies, put in place not by the people but by a few shady and corrupt elites, were destroying America at home and abroad.

To what end? So they could enact a “hidden policy of perpetuating the Red empire in order to perpetuate the high level of Federal spending and control” that would fill the kingmakers’ coffers. With her book she intended to rally grassroots

Haley’s claims rivaled the darkest and most bizarre Clinton conspiracies,

Schlafly’s A Choice Not an Echo

Bulk distribution allowed conservative authors to bypass the publishers, bookstores, and reviewers that shaped the national book market. They instead relied on a network of conservative media sources and organizations to promote and distribute their books.

even those without potential for large sales, because they used their networks of mailing lists, sponsors, and organizations to identify and develop a market for conservative literature.

The lack of an outside publisher carried certain benefits as well. Complete control resided with the author: control of content, of publication schedule, of distribution.

But perhaps Regnery’s failures were a blessing in disguise.

the convention was rife with “whiffs

of fascism” and “signs of intolerance and violence” that “resemble some of the telltale signs that developed in Europe after World War I.

the paperbacks became a lightning rod for criticisms of the right. Commentators picked apart the books’ claims, not only challenging their accuracy but using them to demonstrate the intellectual deficiencies of the American right.

Liberal critics presented the books as evidence of conservatism’s inherent anti-intellectualism.