Bye-bye Miss American Pie -- whatever happened to the Republican Party and conservatism?
Peter Fenn, opinion contributor
As a boy growing up in the 1950s in Massachusetts, my father and I used to go into Boston to Red Sox games and to attend political meetings and state Democratic conventions. We would often go through Belmont, down Concord Ave., past the high school, a bit of a short cut. We would pass a small non-descript brick building that my father told me was the home of the John Birch Society.
During the period of the '50s and '60s, the John Birch Society was also the home of those who wanted the United States out of the United Nations; they wanted to impeach Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; their leader, Robert Welsh, accused Dwight Eisenhower of "deliberate treason"; they even urged their members to infiltrate the local P.T.A. and take over school boards (where, by the way, my father served).
They were full of conspiracy theories, centered around anti-Communism, and were convinced that nefarious power brokers were on the verge of creating a "one-world government." They were denounced by conservatives like William F. Buckley and even Ayn Rand. Buckley's biographer, John Judis, wrote that Buckley was beginning to worry that the "country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn" should the Birchers take hold.
I remember my father describing them as "the two-percenters" - that is, only about 2 percent of Americans bought what they were selling. True conservatives rejected them, and Republicans like Barry Goldwater kept their distance. No one really took them that seriously.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bye-bye-miss-american-pie-%e2%80%94-whatever-happened-to-the-republican-party-and-conservatism/ar-AAKKoVI