William F. Buckley Jr., dead, Barry Goldwater, dead, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, dead. John McBush, not a movement conservative by any stretch of the imagination.
George Packer mourns the loss of an energized, anti-commnist and anti-guvment cracker coalition in his recent ou se trouve les neiges d'hier piece in the Yew Norker, in which he shows "how little life is left in the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Newt Gingrich radicalized, Tom DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces."
The New Gingrich calls for bold new policy prescriptions like cutting the budget of the Census Bureau, gas tax holiday, and replacing air traffic controllers with GPS (nothing could possibly go wrong with that...) Other conservatives recommend wandering in the desert for 40 years until enough Americans hate hippies again.
Bush supporters liked to say he was the incarnation of Ronald Reagan (and that the war in Iraq is 100 percent exactly the same as World War II), and they are correct to the extend that, according to Sean Wilentz, Reagan presided over a period of corruption and favoritism, encouraging hostility toward government agencies and "a general disregard for oversight safeguards as among the evils of 'big government.'"
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