It was Lewis Powell, high-profile attorney/later Supreme Court justice, who was commissioned by the head of the US Chamber of Commerce to write up a guide to a better America through unfettered business forces.
No regulations, or as few as possible. Massive strategic MESSAGING - designed and aggressively pushed by a carefully (and intentionally)-built, nurtured and lavishly funded CONservative infrastructure: an ARMY of right-wing pro-business institutions, think tanks, fellowships, and CONservative foundations, AND delivery systems, like new kinds of friendly media outlets.
They built havens for their own influencers: “thinkers” and “experts”, and “credible” and “legitimate” platforms for people who wrote editorials and position papers to spread the Gospel of CONservatism to an unsuspecting and naive general public and malleable policy-makers; and groom spokespeople and upcoming apostles who could fan out over the American media landscape like a cancer to spread this worldview even farther. Like invading platoons, attacking ALL THINGS LIBERAL-LEANING. By any means available. And if there were none, then such should be constructed.
It was in reaction to what the business community viewed as an assault against them and their perceived dominance by what they saw as a rabble that had been agitating for progressive change, like civil rights, women’s rights, students’ rights, workers’ rights, voters’ rights, renters’ rights, and gay rights since the 1960s. The CONservative business establishment and its friends in government found this to be tremendously threatening to their own sense of Dominion Over All. They didn’t like this revolutionary leveling of the playing field (THEIR playing field) so “the little guy” had a bigger place at the table (THEIR table).
They didn’t like all this social change. And they wanted something done about it:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
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