Honestly thought it would harder to prove the "Birchers were never purged from the conservative movement" thesis but it's actually incredibly easy.
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I mean, there's obviously Phyllis Schalfly and the STOP-ERA movement, which has Birchers and former Birchers all over it. But then there's stuff like Chuck Grassley speaking to the Liberty Lobby, or the chairman of ALEC in 1979 having been on the Birch speaker circuit.pic.twitter.com/KG4pR5wb99
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Group Research's reports are invaluable here in tracing the linkages. (This is from a 1980 newsletter.)
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I mean, the "purge" substantively amounted to Buckley saying some mean things about them in print in 1965 and generally ignoring them afterwards. That's basically it.
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I mean, it’s not a surprise if you’ve read Lisa McGirr, but this from Group Research on the “New Right” of the 1970s is perceptive: The “New Right” was a strategic rebranding of the old right including many of the same old people and organizations…pic.twitter.com/q5v0v5Wq7K
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Hell, Reagan tried to appoint Warren S. Richardson, former general counsel for the Liberty Lobby, to be Assistant Secretary of HHS. He literally worked alongside Pedro Del Valle!pic.twitter.com/oYDw67KpSX
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Not only were the Birchers never "purged," neither was the f*cking Liberty Lobby!
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Replying to @DavidAstinWalsh
None of Buckley's purges amounted to much. I mean he "purged" Ayn Rand and she continued to sell in the millions and have an organized base.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Buckley's "setting the boundaries of conservatism" basically amounted to "here is who I, William F. Buckley, Jr., the wealthy New York intellectual conservative, do not want to sit with at a dinner party."
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It was a fiction that served both Buckley and his liberal interlocuters (who were thus spared having to deal with the real right).
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