{"id":4958,"date":"2021-01-19T23:29:26","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T23:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/19\/before-qanon-ronald-reagan-and-other-republicans-purged-john-birch-society-extremists-from-the-gop-the-washington-post\/"},"modified":"2021-01-19T23:29:26","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T23:29:26","slug":"before-qanon-ronald-reagan-and-other-republicans-purged-john-birch-society-extremists-from-the-gop-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/19\/before-qanon-ronald-reagan-and-other-republicans-purged-john-birch-society-extremists-from-the-gop-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Before QAnon, Ronald Reagan and other Republicans purged John Birch Society extremists from the GOP &#8211; The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Although Welch had been an early donor to Buckley\u2019s National Review in the 1950s, Buckley had come to believe that Welch\u2019s feverish rants threatened the conservative movement\u2019s credibility and its future.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cBuckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn,\u201d John B. Judis wrote in his 1988 biography, \u201cWilliam F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives.\u201d Buckley told Goldwater, according to Judis, that the John Birch Society was a \u201cmenace\u201d to the conservative movement.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>But Goldwater had a problem \u2014 much like the one that Republican leaders face today, as many of their voters embrace QAnon conspiracy theories and President Trump\u2019s false claims of a stolen election. Goldwater wanted to distance himself from the conspiracy theories, but he feared alienating his base.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cEvery other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society,\u201d Goldwater told Buckley and Kirk. \u201cI\u2019m not talking about commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks. I\u2019m talking about the highest cast of men of affairs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/history\/2021\/01\/15\/john-birch-society-qanon-reagan-republicans-goldwater\/\">https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/history\/2021\/01\/15\/john-birch-society-qanon-reagan-republicans-goldwater\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although Welch had been an early donor to Buckley\u2019s National Review in the 1950s, Buckley had come to believe that Welch\u2019s feverish rants threatened the conservative movement\u2019s credibility and its future. \u201cBuckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1hY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}