The dysfunction in this GOP-controlled House might be new, but conservative lamentations that things don’t change much when Republicans take over from Democrats aren’t.
From the beginning of the modern American conservative movement, the focus was as much on defeating rivals within the Republican Party as beating Democrats. Even the titles of popular conservative books told this tale.
Phyllis Schlafly published A Choice, Not An Echo in 1964 because Republicans providing a choice rather than echoing Democrats was considered an open question. Pat Buchanan‘s 1975 Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories: Why the Right Has Failed appeared amid conservative discontent with federal policy after a Republican president’s 49-state landslide reelection. When Buchanan ran for president himself nearly 20 years later, his syndicated column was replaced in some newspapers by those of Samuel Francis, the deeply controversial scribe whose Beautiful Losers:
Read more…
