[Palin Republic]

As much as I personally like Buckley, I must admit he played an enormous role in driving Social Conservatives out of the GOP to make room for Neoconservatives.

That's OK. WE'RE BACK.

["An excerpt from Buckley's forthcoming book, Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, entitled, "Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me" was published in the March 2008 issue of Commentary magazine, which openly calls itself "the flagship of neoconservatism."

The article is a candid description of Buckley's meeting with members of Senator Barry Goldwater's pre-presidential exploratory campaign team in 1962, and of National Review staffer Russell Kirk's attempts to get Goldwater to renounce The John Birch Society. The very liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller had urged Goldwater to do the same, and, for his efforts, was almost drowned out at the podium at the 1964 Republican Convention by a hearty chorus of boos coming from the galleries! To his credit, Senator Goldwater delivered his famous "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" speech, largely as a rebuke to Rockefeller.

Though the Times now credits Buckley for the conditions making Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential nomination possible, it was Robert Welch and The John Birch Society that did the spadework that made that happen, and Senator Goldwater knew it. Buckley talked like a conservative, but his neocon philsophy was much closer to Rockefeller's than to Goldwater's."] -Warren Mass

[kcvl]

I would take anything Jon Meacham writes with a huge grain of salt. I don’t know anyone who still reads Newsweek either (all six pages of it).

[FreedomPoster]

There was a good dissection of the Tanenhaus book posted here on FR. I read it yesterday.

Here:

Is conservatism dead?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2327525/posts?page=1

[bushfamfan]

It’s very telling that the Demonrats always have to lie about who they are. The public is always more conservative in views when actually laid before them on issues and yet falls for the lying masquerade of the Demonrats. So let them be so bold to claim conservatism is dying or close to dead, but it’s coming from people who never deal in reality.

[iowamark]

he[WFB] played an enormous role in driving Social Conservatives out of the GOP to make room for Neoconservatives.

John Birch Society were "social conservatives"? How so?

BTW, Welcome to Free Republic.

[tlb]

Here a week and your mission is to generate the meme that equates and identifies Palin supporters with Birchers ?

No thanks.

[driftless2]

The regular wing of the Republican Party ousted the Birchers because many of them were nuts. That’s why. Not because they were social conservatives. The Birchers had among other things declared Eisenhower to be a member of the communist conspiracy. Now I defy you to say that’s not being nuttier than a box of walnuts.

[behzinlea]

This nut's unstated thesis is that the Democrat Party is the party of virtue, clear vision, and goodness and that Republicans are virtuous, clear-visioned, and good only to the extent that they support the Democrat program and compromise to make the Democrat program even better.

He lauds Obama and praises the Pelosi-Reid socialized medicine scam while completely ignoring the fact that Obama's favorability ratings have gone into the toilet faster than any those of any newly elected president of modern history and that Democrats in Congress are setting themselves up for a 100 seat turnover in 2010 to the party that he says is just about extinct.

He really thinks the rapidly growing citizen resistance to the Democrats' corrupt and suffocating big government initiatives is a fringe movement.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

I’ve read Witness several times. It’s still ponderous and murky (I’m tempted to say “rumpled”), but somehow it’s also comforting, inspiring, and a book you don’t mind reading again in a few years.